Notes:

Latest blog posts from Emirates Economist

Annals of classroom incentives
How to get students to staple assignments.
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Published

Dubai's failed bid to buy an artistic identity
There's a new book out about Dubai, written by the man hired to make Dubai a cultural mecca -- Michael Schindhelm.Michael Wise has a review: His pressing task was to create swiftly what Dubai's leaders proclaimed would be "the most comprehensive cultural destination in the world." This included,...
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Published 15 hours ago

Dubai and the tourism kiss of death
Dubai is becoming more like Sharjah, the bastion for the conservative-minded tourist. The story that's always been told about how Sharjah came to be that way is that it had borrowed heavily from Saudis and had to toe the line. Never mind the irony that many Saudis flocked to Dubai precisely...
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Published 21 hours ago

Tunnelnomics
The economy of Gaza: Despite the melodramatic way in which the tunnels [are] sometimes reported in the media, commercial smuggling is far from secretive. Indeed, on the Gazan side of the border it isn't really smuggling at all, but rather a more-or-less open business that is partly regulated by...
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Published a day ago

New book on Dubai
Syed Ali, Dubai: Gilded Cage, Yale University Press, 2010.Syed Ali is assistant professor of sociology at Long Island University, Brooklyn.From the book blurb: Syed Ali delves beneath the dazzling surface to analyze how - and at what cost - Dubai has achieved such success. Ali brings alive a...
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Published 2 days ago

Markets in everything
NYT. Putting unemployed dogs to work sniffing for bed bugs: Increasingly, real estate lawyers are urging buyers in contract to inspect apartments before they close, and in their advertising, many pest control companies exhort would-be tenants to “inspect before you rent.” And dogs like...
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Published 6 days ago

Toyota discriminates against the elderly
Ted Frank as quoted by Marginal Revolution: In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89�"and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father...
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Published 6 days ago

Economist calls himself bizarre
Paul Krugman disagrees with himself. Ad hominem style -- which is his style.
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Published 2 weeks ago

Greece and Germany; Dubai and Abu Dhabi
What do you think? The Germans don't want to bail out profligate Greece. Is this anything like Abu Dhabi's reluctance to bail out Dubai? The logic of a bail out is that although it rewards behavior, the alternative of letting Greece, or Dubai -- or AIG to give an American example -- would be...
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Published 2 weeks ago

Famous economics majors
Name this famous economics major.
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Published 2 weeks ago

Latest Wall Street binge: Curling
And, no, it's nothing like a hedge, a straddle, or a stripped mortage-backed security:NYT: This slow-poke game, which originated in 16th-century Scotland, has captivated the Type-A world of Wall Street almost by accident. CNBC, whose market chatter is the background music on trading floors,...
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Published 3 weeks ago

IMF report on UAE is out
February 18, 2010 --Transcript of a Press Briefing on the 2009 Article IV Consultation with the United Arab Emirates by Masood Ahmed, Director of the International Monetary Fund’s Middle East and Central Asia Department February 18, 2010 -- United Arab Emirates: 2009 Article IV Consultation -...
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Published 3 weeks ago