Dr. Manal Shehabi

GRM 2019 Workshop: Business-State Relations in the Gulf

Research Fellow - Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

Dr. Manal Shehabi is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES). Before that, she was an OIES Visiting Research Fellow and a researcher at the University of Western Australia, where she also taught introductory and advanced undergraduate courses in economics. Her research encompasses development, applied macroeconomics, energy, political economy, and resource-dependent economies focusing on the Middle East. Her doctoral research focused on petrostates’ economic policy and performance, focusing on contemporary Kuwait. It had important contributions to the analysis of economic adjustments to the recent declines in oil prices, offering a unique and powerful mathematical model of Kuwait’s economy and earning her invitations to join key policy debates. Her publications address expatriate labor and Kuwaitization dynamics, and impacts of subsidy and competition reform on Kuwait’s economy. Besides academia, she has professional experience as an economic consultant, advising multinationals including Fortune 500 and energy companies on transfer pricing arrangements and audits, and modeling costs allocation mechanisms and intangible property valuation. She also successfully launched and managed a business public policy project and researched investments in West Asian hydrocarbons at the UNCTAD. She holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Western Australia, an MIA-Economics from Texas A&M University, and a BA (Honors) magna cum laude in economics and international relations from Ursinus College. A polyglot, her language capabilities include Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese.