<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Luel's Website]]></title><description><![CDATA[Leul Zerihun]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2026 10:35:50 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.leulzerihun.com/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[The Leapfrog Paradox: Why Emerging Economies Sometimes Innovate Faster Than Developed Ones]]></title><description><![CDATA[The Leapfrog Paradox: Why Emerging Economies Sometimes Innovate Faster Than Developed Ones Every few months someone visiting Addis Ababa for the first time says some version of the same thing to me: everyone here pays for everything on their phone, but half the roads are still dirt. The observation is meant as a paradox, and I understand why. But it is only a paradox if you assume that development happens in a fixed sequence, that societies climb the same ladder in the same order, first...]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/post/the-leapfrog-paradox-why-emerging-economies-sometimes-innovate-faster-than-developed-ones</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ac603f32526eefdb7fcaf54</guid><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:34:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/11062b_435e09fe001c4e1a8b5e6ef3ad8aecb6~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Leul Zehurin</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Real Estate as Speculation, Symbol, and Safety Net: Why Property Means Something Different Across Cultures]]></title><description><![CDATA[Houses are treated similarly to all other investment types; the reason why an individual purchases their home is that the expected value (or potential earnings) of purchasing that property (i.e., rental income saved plus capital gains – less the cost associated with selling/buying), exceeds the potential returns available from alternative investments. If we discount the potential future earnings associated with a property and compare those discounted values to the yield on U.S. Treasury...]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/post/the-intersection-of-culture-and-business-in-global-markets</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a13aeb2d681fe01d16748a2</guid><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 02:06:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d35ed7_9a1bf1b101c54d38b1e40e7871c6ac28~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_768,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Leul Zehurin</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Luxury, Scarcity, and Status: Why Veblen Goods Behave Differently in a City Where Everyone Is Wealthy]]></title><description><![CDATA[Status Without Scarcity Thorstein Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption depends on an asymmetry: a status good only communicates status in a room where most people watching cannot afford one themselves. The price is not an obstacle to the signal, it is the signal. Visible expense stages a comparison between owner and observer, and that comparison only works where the gap between them is wide. Veblen wrote about a leisure class sitting inside a much larger population that could see the...]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/post/exploring-global-trends-in-luxury-real-estate-investment</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a13aeb68fa816dacc845a16</guid><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:06:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d35ed7_fa8fca96025e42d8a14f6a78ba74d40e~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_768,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Leul Zehurin</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Urban Land, State Power, and the Politics of the Skyline: What Dubai and Addis Ababa Have in Common]]></title><description><![CDATA[David Harvey’s idea of accumulation by dispossession shows how capital grows not by producing new value so much as by seizing something that already is there, land, water, and converting it into an assent that can be bought, leveraged, and sold. Cities are one of the clearest places this happens, because urban land is finite and the price of it depends on what gets built around it and who is allowed to invest in it.Dubai is close to a pure version of this. Most of its most valuable land...]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/post/leadership-insights-navigating-international-business-challenges</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a13aeb8d681fe01d16748ad</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 02:06:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/fe30c83c218a4eeaba00648bcafbaa98.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Leul Zerihun</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Who really funds growth in poor countries? Often it’s not aid agencies, its families sending money home]]></title><description><![CDATA[The invisible money Every year, migrants working abroad send money back to their families and the total is enormous. For Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, this money, called remittances, is now larger than all the foreign aid these regions receive, and it rivals foreign investment too. Yet it gets far less attention than aid does.  Part of the reason is that aid comes with press releases and government deals, while remittances arrive quietly in small amounts to millions of households. Most...]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/post/who-really-funds-growth-in-poor-countries-often-it-s-not-aid-agencies-its-families-sending-money-h</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ac600d42526eefdb7fca893</guid><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:22:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7d4d12b7f4d34241962dc095c2798f29.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Leul Zehurin</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Informal Economy as Infrastructure: What Street Markets in Addis Ababa Reveal About Trust, Exchange, and Economic Organisation]]></title><description><![CDATA[What the street markets of Addis Ababa taught me about trust, and why economists keep getting them wrong. Walk through the Mercato in Addis Ababa, the biggest open-air market in Africa, and it looks like chaos. It isn't. Every trader there knows which patch of ground is hers. People lend each other money with no paperwork. A fight over a dodgy price gets settled in two minutes by someone everyone trusts. These are rules that apply everywhere, they are not written down. We call this the...]]></description><link>https://www.echoesofhistory.org/post/the-informal-economy-as-infrastructure-what-street-markets-in-addis-ababa-reveal-about-trust-excha</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ac5ffd8373ea30d2b606676</guid><pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2025 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/1b6426a353dc42a08e864660ae82d1a1.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Leuel Zerihun</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>