CRUDE CALCULATIONS
Oliver McPherson-Smith, Cambridge University Press (2026)
Dr. Oliver McPherson-Smith is a world renowned expert on energy and natural resources. He previously served as the lead energy advisor to the President of the United States in the White House. McPherson-Smith was subsequently appointed as a member of the National Petroleum Council.
He holds degrees from Cambridge (BA), Harvard (AM), and Oxford (DPhil) and previously was a research fellow at Stanford University. McPherson-Smith began his career in Nigeria as a television journalist.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Crude Calculations charts a ground-breaking link between autocratic regime stability and economic liberalization amid the global transition to lower-carbon energy sources. It introduces the rent-conditional reform theory to explain how preserving regime stability constrains economic liberalization in resource-wealthy autocracies and hybrid-regimes.
Using comparative case studies of Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, the book traces almost one hundred years of political and legal history to provide a framework for understanding the future of economic liberalization in fossil fuel-rich autocracies. Drawing from archival documents and contemporary interviews, this book explains how natural resource rents are needed to placate threats to regime stability and argues that, contrary to conventional literature, non-democratic, resource-wealthy regimes liberalize their economies during commodity booms and avoid liberalization during downturns.
Amid the global energy transition, Crude Calculations details the future political challenges to economic liberalization in fossil fuel-rich autocracies—and why autocracies rich in battery minerals may pursue economic liberalization.
Learn more about the thesis of the book here.
The first 10 pages and the index of the book are here.
Available on Amazon and Cambridge University Press.
Crude Calculations 