Browsing by Author "Diab, Osama"

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    A Growing Smile and a growing demise: the diminishing value of Damietta furniture making
    (2022-11-27) Hamoud, Maher; Diab, Osama
    Using the Growing Smile framework, we argue in this article that the struggles of manufacturers in the Egyptian furniture industry is part of a historical and structural process characterized by a drop in value added by the manufacturing processes, giving way to higher value added by the pre- and post-manufacturing processes. We found that manufacturers surviving this trend are the ones who can integrate advanced design and marketing techniques in their processes, and in some cases outsource the manufacturing process altogether, while focusing instead on design and marketing. These are large players who increasingly operate and employ workers from Egypt's large metropolises, namely Cairo. This causes the redistribution of value to Cairo-based business and professions at the expense of the provincial city of Damietta. Internationally, with increased automation, more of the value is captured by the manufacturers of IP-heavy machines at the expense of traditional craftsmen. These trends have serious repercussions on an increasingly industrialising Global South, prominently among which is a rapidly falling employment-to-population ratio.
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    Prebisch and Singer in the Egyptian cotton fields
    (2023-06-20) Diab, Osama
    By emphasising the role of historical contingency in determining the losers and winners of economic interaction, the article argues that barter terms of trade (BTT) evolution is key to understanding central phenomena of the modern capitalist era apart from Weberian and Sombartian culturalist interpretations. By examining BTT data between Egypt and Britain in the long 19th century, the article demonstrates how it was a rational choice by an independent economy to commit to a 'peripheral' comparative advantage as future value evolution could not have been predicted at the onset of such commitment. Relying on previously unpublished archival records, the article also explores the role of empire and political power in determining supply and demand and hence value evolution, challenging neoclassical assumptions about the central role of consumer choice in influencing supply, demand and commodity value. The article argues that the BTT evolution is key to understanding two central phenomena of the modern capitalist era away from Weberian- and Sombartian-style culturalist interpretations. First is the growing uneven development–known as the Great Divergence–between the 'core' and the 'periphery' of the global economic system, and second is the rise of anti-colonial sentiments and policies in the Global South.