In a wide range of economic and social domains, it is easy to see how being patient is advantageous: it helps you get better grades; a nicer job; appear more tolerant, and so on.
In the Arabian Gulf countries, despite the high levels of per capita income, there is a sense that people are yet to realise their full potential, with one reason being a relative lack of fiscal patience.
For example, the savings rate in the Gulf countries is very low and this contributes to low levels of private investment. By contrast, the ability of wider Asian region cultures to defer gratification, reflected in their high saving rates, is often cited as a reason for their economic success.
The problem for Gulf policymakers is twofold: is it even possible to manipulate an individual’s patience? And if so, how can one go about it?
A recent study by economists Sule Alan (University of Essex, UK) and Seda Ertac (Koc University, Turkey) entitled Fostering Patience in the Classroom, has yielded some promising results. The authors’ first step was composing an educational curriculum designed to develop patience in young children. Based on their own previous research, they conjectured that an important contributor to patience was the ability to concretely imagine future scenarios, and to think vividly about the choices available in the present.
For example, if a child is deciding whether to buy sweets today or save up for a bicycle tomorrow, then it is common for the temptation of immediate gratification from sweets to be too strong, especially if the sweets are in front of the child. To help a child to overcome this, they need to be able to think clearly about the enjoyment of owning the bicycle, and to compare it with the enjoyment of consuming the sweets immediately.
Prof Alan and Prof Ertac sensed that impatient children were ineffective at the imagination and comparison steps, and devised a series of exercises that help build the associated skills. They then selected a group of primary schools, and in a subset of these schools, they trained the teachers in this new curriculum; the remaining schools continued according to the conventional curriculum, acting as a benchmark for comparisons.
The researchers wanted to answer three questions: is it possible to make children behave more patiently? Would it apply across a variety of important decisions that relate to deferred gratification? And would the effects persist long after the children had left primary school and returned to conventional curriculums?
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The answers to all three questions were positive. The selected children exhibited higher levels of patience in a selection of diagnostic tests. Moreover, they were significantly less likely to receive a low "behaviour grade" on their official school records; failing to think through the consequences of one's actions are usually a primary cause of disruptive behaviour. And crucially, these effects persisted almost three years after the start of the experiment, when the children had moved on to middle school.
Educators and policymakers in the Gulf should pay close attention to these findings as they may hold the key to highly effective educational reforms. When considering how to improve educational outcomes, policymakers have come to accept that expensive investments are necessary, such as hiring better quality teachers, decreasing class sizes, purchasing IT equipment, and so on. Prof Alan and Prof Ertac’s results suggest that low-cost modifications to the curriculum can yield positive returns not just in the educational domain, but also in all aspects of life.
From a scientific perspective, it is important to keep tracking the cohort of students in the study to see the effects over 10 years and beyond. Moreover, hopefully scholars and educational experts will try to replicate the results in other countries, possibly while introducing intelligent adjustments that yield even better outcomes. The Gulf countries should consider being at the forefront of such efforts.
Another important lesson from the study is the importance of research and development. When we think of technological advancement, we usually imagine huge, multimillion-dollar labs staffed by armies of scientists. This potentially ground-breaking research was essentially executed by two scholars. And while they acknowledge receiving financial support from multiple sources, it is highly unlikely that the budget approached what is typical from a modern, high-tech project. The reason is that intelligent scholars were given the institutional support necessary to try something novel.
These are circumstances that the Gulf countries need to work hard at creating, as the long-term benefits could be very large. We shouldn't expect all studies to yield results that are as dramatic as those of Prof Alan and Prof Ertac. However, the unique nature of the Gulf economies and culture mean that there is a need for a lot of Gulf-specific research, and such research should be a priority.
Omar Al-Ubaydli @omareconomics is a researcher at Derasat, Bahrain.
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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