Mark Vaughan, a working economist who has been auditing  my Economics of Education class, sent me this email about his experiences in  UAE a quarter c

UAE 25 Years Ago - by Bryan Caplan - Bet On It

submited by
Style Pass
2024-10-30 19:30:05

Mark Vaughan, a working economist who has been auditing my Economics of Education class, sent me this email about his experiences in UAE a quarter century ago. Reprinted with his permission. Enjoy!

I enjoyed your posts on the U.A.E.  When I worked for the Fed, I served on a team that shared best practices in capital-market risk measurement/management with examiners/supervisors around the world.  I typically got to spend two full weeks in a country, and the hosts made sure the team got to sample fully the food, culture, and entertainment during off hours.  In January 1999, I spent two weeks in the U.A.E. working with representatives from the Arab Monetary Fund.  Even though 25 years has passed, it sounds as if not much has changed.  I agree it is a country that works. 

Two incidents stand out from my visit.  I got my haircut in the hotel barbershop.  The barber was from Turkey (which was considerably more open then than today).  He and his family were in the U.A.E. on a guest worker visa.  We had a nice long solitary chat (i.e., the door to the shop was closed, and no one else came in while I was there).  He went on and on about how much he and his family loved the U.A.E. (offering many detailed reasons, so it did not sound canned).  I asked him if he missed Turkey’s relative openness.  [Just that morning, I had purchased the latest edition of THE ECONOMIST in the hotel gift shop.  Stories had been physically cut out of all the copies.  When I got back to the U.S., I looked at those issues to find out what had been cut – a story about the U.A.E. and a couple of stories about other Arab countries.]  He looked at me as if I had two heads.  He said words to the effect of “only an affluent American would ask a question like that.”  To him, all that really mattered was the economic opportunity U.A.E. afforded.

Leave a Comment