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This chapter examines the characteristics of the natural resources that are important for Central Asia. At independence, cotton was the most important commodity export from Central Asia, but cotton did not share in the commodity boom, never repeating the 1995 peak price of over a dollar per pound. In the twenty-first century, cotton has been displaced by oil and gas and minerals. However, all the governments have shown concern about ongoing dependence on primary product exports, whose importance increased after independence despite plans for economic diversification. The chapter then reviews the resource curse literature that highlights why primary product dependence may be harmful. Resource curse outcomes are not inevitable, but resource-abundant countries do face significant obstacles if they want to avoid such an outcome.

The specialization of urban regions in different tradable industries is the source of significant differences in wages and income levels. Los Angeles was more specialized than San Francisco in 1970 but considerably less specialized in 2010. During this period, San Francisco consolidated its specialization in activities related to information technology, and Los Angeles consolidated its hold on the entertainment industries, but Los Angeles lost many other high-wage specializations it formerly contained, replacing them with low-wage specializations. Los Angeles also lost its lead over San Francisco in innovative sectors, as the latter soared in its per capita patenting rate. All in all, Los Angeles’s economy came to have less overall focus and sophistication, while San Francisco’s came to have more.

This chapter demonstrates that in a country like Zambia where rents are important for the economy of the country (due to role of the mining industry), a vicious circle seems to be in place. A lack of economic/trade diversification enables capture and rent-seeking behaviour to prosper, which then perpetuates the status quo, which goes against economic diversification. It then contributes to explain the dualistic nature of the private sector with productivity differences between large firms and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) being extreme. In this context, trading (especially informal) is not risky as manufacturing, it is easier to enter the market and more profitable, which can explain why few individuals follow the manufacturing route instead of the trading one. The chapter finally analyses the ineffectiveness of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, mainly due to political interference.

Chapter 9 concludes and offers a speculative outlook. Food security in Gulf countries is about managing import dependence. Self-sufficiency is no longer an option because of water scarcity. Food imports offer the opportunity to import “virtual water” that is embedded in food. Foreign agro-investments in developing countries can be one piece of the puzzle, but they may end up stillborn like previous attempts in Sudan in the 1970s. Win-win situations will only prove possible if the interests of stakeholders in targeted countries are safeguarded. Apart from this, Gulf countries will need to look at other areas to guarantee food security. They can improve cooperation with institutions like the WTO. They can work on international storage solutions in order to prevent a renewed occurrence of export restrictions. They can improve water security with domestic policies. They can also ensure revenue streams by stretching the lifetime of their oil reserves and further economic diversification.

This chapter discusses the economic resilience of the small family farms and the constraints that these farms faced in the post-Mao era. Key features of the family economy, such as managerialism, diversification, and commodification, have had major implications for China’s rapid economic development in recent decades. Meanwhile, many social and economic factors have prevented rural populace in China’s interior regions from reaching prosperity. These factors include the government policies that have enabled the government to extract massive rural resources to support industrialization and urbanization, labor surplus caused by China’s extremely large population base, and the very limited land resources. Due to these factors, farmers tend to hold an ambivalent attitude toward farming and land.

This chapter discusses the rural transformation, a process of comprehensive societal change whereby rural societies diversify their economies and reduce their reliance on agriculture; become dependent on distant places to trade and to acquire goods, services, and ideas; move from dispersed villages to towns and small and medium cities; and become culturally more similar to large urban agglomerations. The rural transformation is the result, first of all, of the action of global drivers, such as the diversification of rural economies away from agriculture, the globalization of agrifood systems, and the urbanization of rural regions. While global forces drive this transformation, they are mediated by localized social structures, institutional frameworks, and local societies with different levels of human agency. The interplay of global and local factors explains why the rural transformation between and within different countries has different outcomes in terms of economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

Dubai has evolved from fishing village into a transportation and logistics world hub with the largest man-made harbor in the world. From the Dubai base, DP World – as the overall operating company is now known – encompasses a total of 77 marine and inland terminals across the world. As a global operator, DP World now is third in world ranking for container throughput. Under the Dubai regimen, ports push inland to organize or reorganize urban territory at increasingly distant locations, utilizing rail, highway, and air facilities for intermodal logistics systems. The deliberate instituting of multi-modality thus goes beyond the limited physical infrastructure of what is needed for shipping per se and includes free trade zones and other distinctive governance arrangements. Hardware and software aligns to coordinate across global sites. DP World represents success in fostering UAE diversification away from oil and gas and reaching far beyond its borders.

Iceland and Greenland share historical and socioeconomic and political conditions as former or present North Atlantic autonomies of the Kingdom of Denmark. As very small natural resource-based economies, they strive to develop and diversify their economies. Hydropower potential has played a large role in Icelandic economic development, and may do so in Greenland. Literature has overlooked the knowledge economy of hydropower in Iceland and Greenland. Large-scale hydropower projects rest on knowledge in geology, glaciology, hydrology, biology, surveying, engineering, law, finance, planning, and more. This chapter focuses on the experiences and prospects of creating globally connected, domestic knowledge-based hydropower sectors in Iceland and Greenland. Iceland has through strong domestic education and brain circulation domesticized this knowledge and reaped more benefits from its hydropower. Greenland with a smaller and less educated workforce is facing significant challenges to fill the knowledge jobs in a hydropower sector.