IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-03421-5_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Iran: from Third to First World

In: The Economies of the Middle East

Author

Listed:
  • Rodney Wilson

Abstract

Since most economic observers agree that Iran offers the greatest development potential in the Middle East, it seems appropriate to treat that country first in this present work. Its development experience during the last thirty years illustrates how a medium-sized state with a population of 34 million can be transformed economically, provided ample financial resources are available. Iran is, of course, fortunate in having substantial oil revenues, as it is the second largest producer in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia, with annual revenues averaging almost $20 (US) billion over the 1975–7 period.1 Unlike Saudi Arabia, however, Iran has the necessary complementary resources, both in terms of manpower and land, to ensure that the financial boom resulting from oil exports is translated into real domestic economic growth. Consequently the country is rapidly being modernised along Western lines as economic diversification gathers momentum, and by the 1990s Iranian living standards may not be far short of those prevailing in Western Europe. The Iranian government has in fact become obsessed in recent years with the question of development, since they feel they must modernise quickly, before their oil resources become depleted in a couple of decades’ time.

Suggested Citation

  • Rodney Wilson, 1979. "Iran: from Third to First World," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: The Economies of the Middle East, chapter 1, pages 1-19, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-03421-5_1
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-03421-5_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-03421-5_1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.