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- Hossein Askari (economist) is a scholar of economic development in the Middle East and in Islam and the founder of Islamicity Indices, a benchmark to build effective institutions for political, social and economic reform and progress. He was born in Iran and received his elementary and secondary education in the United Kingdom. He then came to the United States where he earned his SB in Civil Engineering, attended the MIT Sloan School of Management, and received his PhD in Economics, all at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an instructor at MIT, and started his academic career in 1969 as an Assistant Professor of Economics at Tufts University, becoming Associate Professor at Wayne State University in 1973, and Associate Professor of International Business and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 1975 and Professor in 1978. He taught at George Washington University (GW) from 1982 to 2019, where he served as Chairman of the International Business Department and as Director of the Institute of Global Management and Research and was the Aryamehr-Iran Professor of International Business and International Affairs from 1998 to January 2019, when he became Emeritus Professor. He hopes to take the Islamicity Indices Program, which he established, to a university for its home. He served for two and a half years on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund and was Special Advisor to the Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia; in this capacity he frequently spoke for Saudi Arabia at the IMF Executive Board; he assisted in the negotiations of a $10 billion loan to the IMF; and he developed the idea of a special Quota increase for Saudi Arabia, giving Saudi Arabia an effective permanent seat on the IMF and World Bank Executive Boards and promoting Saudi Arabia’s membership to the important G-20 Committee. During the mid-1980s he directed an international team that developed the first comprehensive domestic, regional and international energy models and plan for Saudi Arabia. During 1990-1991 he was asked by the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia to act as an intermediary to restore diplomatic relations; and in 1992 he was asked by the Emir of Kuwait to mediate with Iran. He has written on economic development in the Middle East, Islamic economics and finance, international trade and finance, agricultural economics, oil economics and on economic sanctions. In 2005, he was a speaker for the motion, “This House believes that oil has been more of a curse than a blessing for the Middle East,” at the Doha Debates. The motion passed with a wide margin. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LieEjeUyT3I) (en)
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