George S Naufal

Expats and the Labor Force examines the flows of people and money in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This timely book outlines the reasons that made the Gulf region a destination for millions of migrants. Taking advantage of the discovery of large hydrocarbon reserves and relatively stable political environment, the GCC countries filled the large demand for labor with foreign workers. However the number, share, and source of expatriates have presented serious challenges for the region. Naufal and Genc discuss these consequences on the composition of the labor force and remittance outflows.

As the world’s oil and gas prices decline, taxation of foreign workers’ remittances has increasingly
become a potentially viable solution to address government budget deficits in the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) states. With growing unemployment rates and labour shortages among local populations,
the GCC governments have recently proposed legislative and, in some cases already introduced,
economic measures to tax foreign workers’ remittances. Newly proposed tax measures on remittance outflows
are often rationalised as critical stop-gap solutions to mitigate high government budget deficits and
share costs in accessing state-subsidized public infrastructure and services. Yet, several GCC governments
face a complex policy dilemma between balancing budget deficits and addressing high labour shortages
and incentives in local labour markets. Thus, the key policy question is: how can GCC governments manage
this emerging policy dilemma within their borders? This policy brief examines not only the recently
suggested policy responses of various GCC governments but also their long-term potential implications
on national labour markets and migrants and their families both in the destination and origin countries.

The growth in the number and in the size of remittances and the stability of these monetary transfers have made them a prime target for policymakers. Because remittance flows go directly to households in emigrants’ home countries, one has to wonder about their effects on household decision-making, particularly in relation to the number of children to have. While this is household specific, when considered at the community and country level, there are significant policy implications for remittance-receiving economies. Therefore, it is crucial to more fully understand the relationship between remittance inflows and fertility rates.

We examine how selected high school characteristics – including type of diploma – contribute to students' academic success in an American-type university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We find no robust evidence that US, UK, and UAE systems of high school diploma produce different outcomes, once we control for English proficiency. Irrespective of the type of diploma, high school grade is a strong positive predictor of future performance. We identify significant female, nationality, and family income effects. There is evidence that school ownership (private versus public) does not matter, and that graduates of coeducational schools perform better.

After independence, the GCC countries relied heavily on foreign workers from fellow Arabs countries. Thus, remittances flowed from GCC to other countries in MENA. In the 1980s-1990s labor source switched to South Asia; so did the flow of remittances. This paper examines the consequences of the shift in the source of labor by econometrically testing the existence of structural breaks in the flow of remittances in the MENA region. The change in the direction of remittance flows deprived several MENA labor exporters of large sums of foreign exchange, adding significant economic, social and political hardships on non-GCC MENA countries.

Abstract The strong economic ties between the GCC economies and the US are manifested in three ways: currency peg, coupling of monetary policy and the adoption of the US dollar as the trading currency for oil. This paper examines how these dynamics result in misalignment of the US monetary policy with the business cycles of the GCC economies. The study analyzes how the staggering amount of remittances from the GCC economies plays a stabilizing role as a tacit monetary policy tool.

"Despite being a fixture of everyday life in the Arab world, wasta, which may be thought of as special influence by members of the same group or tribe, has received little attention from social scientists. Our casual empiricism suggests that wasta is an important determinant of how economic activities are organized and resources are allocated in Middle Eastern societies, yet economists, even those who specialize in work related to the Middle East, have not addressed the issue of wasta. With this paper we provide a modest beginning to filling that void. Specifically, we use the history of wasta, Hayek’s concept of extended order and Coase’s work on the nature of the firm to draw inferences regarding the existence of wasta and its persistence in Arab societies.
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This study examines the impact of a remittances shock on the main macroeconomic aggregates of a small open economy. It uses a stochastic limited participation model to generate dynamics that are consistent with the empirical literature, like the increase in inflation, consumption, and leisure. However, the remittances shock generates a prolonged decline in GDP, which only diminishes when remittances are a larger percentage of GDP, the fraction of remittances directed towards investment increases, or when the fraction of labor income that remittances represent is reduced and is overturned when the persistence of the remittances shocks is shortened.

This paper gives an overview of the movement of people and money in the GCC countries. The Gulf region is the third most important migration region in the world. It also embraces top remittance sending countries. Historically, the demand for foreign labor was met from other Arab countries but has been steadily replaced by workers from South Asia. This change is clearly evident in the remittance flows in the region. The paper also discusses the causes and consequences of this modification in labor. In light of the latest political unrest in the MENA region, the topic is of great significance

While remittances from the GCC countries to Asia slowed down during the crisis, there is no evidence of large decreases. On the other hand, remittances to several MENA countries decreased during 2009, but the evidence for 2010 suggests a reversal
of this pattern. Most of the recent labour policies adopted in the region have been directed towards improving the conditions of foreign workers and there is still a considerable demand for foreign labour in the region. As such, the future may bring extra competition between Asian workers and workers from other MENA countries for jobs in the GCC countries.

Abstract Because most turnover studies focus on certified nursing assistants (CNAs), licensed vocational nurses (LVNs), and administrators, little is known about registered nurses'(RNs) higher turnover. This study builds on the current body of knowledge about turnover among RN supervisors in nursing homes. The article discusses a survey of RN nurse supervisors administered in more than 1,000 nursing homes that was merged with the 2003 Texas Medicaid cost report and the area resource file. Two 2-stage models are ...