Egypt's new finance minister and the rentier state

Egypt's new finance minister is the respected economist Hazem al-Biblawy. I am not sure why he was appointed (or why his equally respected predecessor, Samir Radwan, left) but it's interesting to note that one of his academic specializations is the rentier state. He even edited a book about the rentier state in the Arab world in the 1980s, with Giacomo Luciani. An excerpt:

Good theoretical grounding to have as Egypt tries to finance its fiscal deficit by leveraging its strategic rent-value in the Gulf and the West — a policy I like to call Mubarakonomics.