A lot of the discussion of Kobane/Rojava has discussed the direct democratic elements, but these seem mostly regarding the political sphere. I haven't seen much on the economy, so please post links. A couple of questions I've been thinking about:
1. What was the pre-war class structure, state of development, economy etc in Rojava? Kamran Matin's piece talks about "rapid processes of capitalist development that has dramatically transformed the social fabric of Kurdish society over the last fifty years or so (...) [and a] rapid, and top-down character of capitalist development in the region." But this isn't expanded much, beyond noting a growth in literacy, urbanisation, and a new intelligentsia.
2. How, if at all, has it changed since the war/withdrawal of Syrian state forces? This piece sounds a bit like 'disaster communism': "Everybody is a volunteer in Kobane, in order to keep up the resistance against ISIS. Doctors and nurses work for free at the makeshift hospitals; shopkeepers have emptied their shops of food, drinks and other accessories in order to distribute them for free to the fighters and civilians. Courageous mothers whose sons and daughters are fighting on the frontline gather and cook food on a daily basis for whoever is hungry and needs food. Money is no longer worth anything because everybody wants to share their resources as well as their willpower to help one another through these hard times" - but this may well reflect the disaster-like conditions of wartime scarcity, temporary flight of bourgeoisie from the warzone etc, rather than a more permanent shift away from a monetary economy.
3. What are the economic policies of the PYD? Apparently "we are starting with cooperatives. We are starting with small units of production. We will develop an economy based on agriculture" and "We will attempt to include regional capital investors in this process. But we will not allow them the opportunity to exploit the community and people or monopolize." Hard to tell if this is like Venezuela's 'co-operative development' where co-ops are exempt from minimum wage etc, or a more novel model of economic development trying to partner regional capital with self-managed agriculture.
Great questions.
I'm not sure if it's similar in Rojava, but here's some information on Kurdistan in Turkey, which applies to your first question. With the Syrian state things have likely developed differently in Rojava, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were similarities. (Even if not, it's still interesting to know the economic context for Turkish Kurdistan.)
http://new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism