Beirut Blogging

After a delightful dinner by the seaside last night with friends from Canada, Estonia, Germany, and Jordan, we met at 8:30 this morning with our colleagues and had the first day of the Economic Freedom of the World network meeting in Beirut.

My colleagues Ghaleb Hijazi and Fadi Haddadin brought from Jordan the beautifully printed and bound full Arabic edition of the Economic Freedom of the World report. It’s beautiful and really impressive. They also printed the brochures for Misbahalhurriyya.org, the Arabic libertarian website and publishing service, in Jordan and brought those, as well as elegant and professional displays. We got a preview today of a series that they helped to produce with Al Jazeera that will be run over the next month.

My colleague Andrei Illarionov gave a really interesting presentation that looked at the roots of Arab economic stagnation, during which he showed that it’s not religion, it’s not ethnicity, and it’s not even oil — it’s state-owned oil monopolies that have been responsible since the 1970s for lagging economic performance in the Arab world. (In particular, his data showed that the difference between Arab OPEC members and Arab non-OPEC members was quite interesting.)

I’ll wander off a bit later to visit the Hezbollah camp in front of the prime minister’s office. A number of foreign participants, as well as a lot of the Lebanese participants, have not taken part, due to security concerns, but for those who did come, it all seems rather peaceful. (On the other hand, given the Syrian approach to Lebanese politics, if I were a Lebanese minister, I might not go to a lot of public events, either.)

Photos to follow.