Extractive Growth in the United Arab Emirates

Acemoglu and Robinson: In the last blog post we showed how from 1928 until the 1960s despite the ever increasing flow of oil, the Al-Nahyan family, in the shape of Sheik Shakhbut bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, kept the country resolutely underdeveloped... a major program of economic modernization and infrastructure building, the remarkable results of which you can see today in Abu Dhabi.... ...this sort of growth will ultimately become unsustainable — growth in Abu Dhabi and in the Emirates cannot continue unless the political institutions become more inclusive...