Mohammad Reza Farzanegan is Professor of Economics of the Middle East (W3) and Chair of the Research Group at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies of the Philipps-University of Marburg in Germany. He is the program director for the Master’s program in Economics of the Middle East. He currently manages a project on Political Economy of Natural Resources at Marburg, funded by DAAD with Iran. His research interests are on the political economy of oil, demographic transitions, political economy of sanctions and conflict, and empirical institutional economics. Recent publications include a co-edited volume, Economic Welfare and Inequality in Iran: Developments since the Revolution (with P. Alaedini, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); he published “Does Terrorism Reduce Life Satisfaction?” in Applied Economics Letters (with T. Krieger, and D. Meierrieks, 2017); “Corruption and Political Stability: Does the Youth Bulge Matter?” in European Journal of Political Economy (with S. Witthuhn, 2016); “Political Institutions and Government Spending Behavior: Theory and Evidence from Iran,” in International Tax and Public Finance (with S. Dizaji and A. Naghavi, 2016); and “Resource Rents, Balance of Power, and Political Stability” in Journal of Peace Research (with K. Bjorvatn, 2015) among others. He received the Alexander von Humboldt Georg Forster Research Fellowship for his postdoctoral project (2010-12); he earned his PhD (with DAAD scholarship) at TU Dresden (2006-2009; summa cum laude); dissertation topic: Political Economy of Natural Resources and Governance in Iran: An Empirical Investigation.