Abstract: | Two factors vital to economic development - population and oil - are distributed in an extremely uneven manner among the eighteen states comprising the Arab world. The states without oil tend to have large populations; those with large amounts of oil tend to have small populations. But the abstract possibility of mutually beneficial cooperation between the population-rich and the oil-rich is not being realised. Rather, mass migration to the oil states from other Arab countries, though in progress for less than a decade, is having a negative impact on the labour exporting states, states also hit by the higher price of OPEC oil. At the same time, the longer-run economic impact of the oil boom upon the producer states has also become one of dubious benefit, given the increased reliance on foreign goods and labour which oil revenues have promoted. Notes, tab., French sum. p. 8. |