The acceleration of economic development and rising standards of living have made energy security a top priority for policy makers worldwide. The issue of securing energy is particularly challenging for Jordan, which suffers from scarcity of natural resources, combined with the regional instability and conflicts. Based on desk research and on experts’ interviews, this study discusses the status quo of the energy sector in Jordan, its main challenges, and future aspirations. It thus contributes to the debate on how Jordan can ensure environmental, economic, social, and political sustainability of its energy sector. Jordan’s energy security has been historically linked to its relations with the neighboring countries and thus vulnerable to external shocks and outside political events. Notwithstanding reform efforts to reduce dependency from imports and some progress in diversifying the energy mix, energy security remains critical: the country imports around 94% of its energy, which represents approximately 10% of GDP. The growing domestic demand, which increases at a yearly rate of 3%, further adds to the pressure to envision strategies towards a more sustainable energy sector. These strategies will need to include investment in renewable energy, the reduction of energy consumption via increasing energy efficiency, and also synergic agreements with other countries. The interviewed experts highlighted the importance of governance for the successful implementation of these strategies. The creation of an enabling environment should go hand in hand with the involvement of all key stakeholders from energy and related sectors, into the development of a future vision of a sustainable energy sector.

This paper draws on institutional and experimental economics to investigate the role of exogenous and endogenous rules in irrigation systems. The hypotheses we examine argue that despite the differences between socio-economic and political settings, (1) endogenous rule-crafting can help water users to overcome appropriation and provision dilemmas in water-scarce environments like in the East Mediterranean countries and that (2) in market-like water governance systems, institutions other than the market itself, are less influential for overcoming appropriation and provision dilemmas than in hybrid governance systems. These hypotheses are being tested comparing the results of field experiments conducted in Jordan, the Republic of Cyprus and North Cyprus with 70 farmers. Field experiments simulate asymmetric access to resources and are based on variations of the irrigation game by Cardenas et al. to model and test asymmetric distribution of investment, harvest and revenue that favours upstream users. Empirical evidence shows that externally imposed allocation rules are able to bring in more equal distribution of revenue among upstream–downstream users but is likely to reduce the volume of investment and revenue, without resolving issues of free-riding. The authors argue that given the opportunity, water users (small farmers in our experiments) are able to craft their own rules improving the overall performance of the group in terms of investment and revenue, with a parallel improvement of equity in distribution. The implications and policy relevance of such findings are briefly discussed as they contradict typical practices of top-down policy delivery in the selected cases.

Cultural and creative industries, also known as the Orange Economy, are characterized by both cultural and commercial value and considered as an important engine for economic growth and employment. Notwithstanding the increasing attention by policy makers worldwide, statistics relating to their economic contribution are still lacking and/or outdated. This study aims to provide an operational definition of the Orange Economy and suggest a pragmatic approach for estimating its direct economic impact, based on the latest version of the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC-4). Applying this methodology to the case of Jordan for the period 2011–2018, it emerges that the Orange Economy has been almost duplicating its value added creation since 2011, to reach 2.4% of GDP in 2018. Further estimations reveal that, in 2018, the Orange Economy employed 3% of the workforce, profiling itself as labor intensive, and therefore, as a potential driver of employment.

The fall of international oil prices by the mid-1980s and the associated economic downturn of the oil-rich countries of the Gulf represented a turning point in the economic history of Jordan, which has been historically dependent on international aid and workers’ remittances. Expansionary policies, failing to recognize the reduced inflow of external rent, led to an unprecedented rise in public debt. The situation culminated in 1989 in a deep financial crisis which induced Jordan to start a comprehensive economic reform program, inspired by the principles of the Washington Consensus. This study aims at investigating the emergence and main sources of Jordanian public debt, focusing on its external components. Based on archival research and interviews with experts, the study analyses the main reasons behind the rapid public debt increase in the second half of the 1980s and discusses its sustainability in relation to main creditor nations, negotiations with the donor community, conditionality of support, and implementation of reforms. The analysis reveals that before the 1989 crisis, there was no centralized management of public debt and debt was contracted to finance the needs of a bloated state apparatus and was not linked to comprehensive development strategies.