CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Mohamed, Omar Youssef |
|---|---|
| Title | A Theoretical Synthesis of Services-Led Development and a Reformed Dependency Theory: The Strong Case for State-Owned Service Enterprises in the Developing World |
| Summary | Recent decades witnessed a phenomenon of premature deindustrialization and a simultaneous growth in services partially due to services’ labor-absorption characteristics, while increased digitalization led to more international trade in services. These developments posit new challenges to our classical understanding of development and establishment development theories. Joseph Stiglitz and Dani Rodrik are at the helm of Economists arguing for a services-led approach to development. At the same time, a renewal movement for dependency theory aimed at addressing the approach’s criticisms is taking place but is not considering this growth in services. In my thesis, by conducting an extensive literature review of core ideas in classical and modern dependency literature, as well as some of the most recent works at the frontier of development thinking, I go beyond existing literature and offer a theoretical synthesis that integrates the centrality of services in development processes in the developing world with a reimagined dependency theory approach. While admitting that there is no one-size-fits-all policy suitable for development, but through building on my theoretical analysis and a very brief case study of the tourism sector in Tanzania, I present the strong case for more state-owned enterprises in the service sector in the periphery. |
| Supervisor | Horvath, Julius |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/mohamed_omar.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2025, Central European University