Working Paper on Understanding Yemen's Economy
This working paper, authored by Richard Barltrop, TPP Associate and LSE Middle East Centre visiting senior fellow, explores how the prevailing picture of Yemen's economy is incomplete and misleading. Economic estimates ignore between half and two-thirds of the country. Analyses overlook Yemen’s relative strengths in infrastructure, agriculture and remittances, and overestimate the importance of oil and gas. This inaccurate picture of Yemen’s economy, which ignores the political context, has significant consequences. It contributes to an international misapprehension, whereby the country’s economy is seen primarily in terms of precarity and humanitarian emergency, with capabilities and resilience under-recognised.
The paper makes four recommendations to the international community:
1. Take a political economy perspective, combining analysis of Yemen’s economy with an understanding of the actual political and governance situation in the country.
2. Move away from unexamined assumptions and clichés about Yemen, and instead find and use new sources of data.
3. Draw on more accurate understandings of Yemen’s economy to contribute to peace efforts.
4. Use these fuller understandings to rebalance assistance to Yemen, with a shift from humanitarian towards development and peace-supporting aid.
New Policy and Practice Brief on Indonesian fuel subsidies
In our latest Policy and Practice Brief, TPP Director Neil McCulloch, Anissa Suharsono and Kevin O’Rourke explain why Indonesia still spends so much on fossil fuel subsidies and why reform is so hard. They show how reform could still happen, and what those who want change can do.
Latest Newsletter from TPP - October 2026
In our latest newsletter: a new Brief on pathways of change, our FCDO Sahel Technical Support Project, two PEA courses open for applications, an updated Online Library, and Steve Fraser appointed as our latest Principal.
Policy and Practice Brief 21: Pathways of Change
Our new Policy and Practice Brief by TPP Directors Gareth Williams and Neil McCulloch sets out the Pathways of Change framework, a practical link between political economy analysis and action. Using examples from Ghana and Thailand, it shows how external partners can support change driven by domestic actors, based on a realistic analysis of how change might happen.