Massoud Karshenas

Massoud Karshenas is a collaborating researcher for the New Directions in Social Policy project. He previously co-ordinated the UNRISD project on Social Policy in Late Industrializers: Social Policy and Economic Development in the Middle East and North Africa 2002-2004 in collaboration with Valentine Moghadam.
At the time of his term, Karshenas was Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, SOAS, University of London. He was also a Fellow of the Economic Research Forum for Arab Countries, Turkey and Iran (ERF). His research interests include, political economy of the Middle East, poverty and environment in Least Developed Countries, economics of technological change, and intersectoral resource flows.

His publications include, Oil State and Industrialization in Iran, Cambridge University Press, 1990, Industrialization and Agricultural Surplus: A comparative Study of Economic Development in Asia, Oxford University Press, 1995, Macroeconomic Policies, Structural Change and Employment in the Middle East and North Africa, UNDP, 1994, and ‘Agriculture and Economic Development in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, May 2001. Professor Karshenas has been the principle consultant for the Least Developed Countries Reports, 2000, and 2002, UNCTAD.