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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 May 2000 Issue No. 481
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Interview Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Statistically yours
By Fayza Hassan
As an economics graduate with a minor in statistics, I cannot claim that I ever did my alma mater proud. Nor did my parents spend their money wisely in this particular instance. My active contributions to my chosen field of study have been nil at best and I can say that I have exhibited throughout my life an incredible obtuseness towards anything pertaining to economic theory or the computation of the simplest statistical data. Neither the World Bank's nor the IMF's shenanigans have ever made any sense to me, and as for the much talked-about structural adjustment, it only brings to mind either an operation carried out by a carpenter to reinforce the frame of an old table, or, more recently, the transformation of a motor vehicle carburetor, allowing it to operate on natural gas instead of gasoline.
Only recently and by mere chance, while reading an article written some time ago by prominent professor of economics Charles Issawi, did I begin to understand that my reluctance to take economic pronouncements seriously may have been justified after all. While wasting my own time, and my parents' investment in my future, taking one economics class after the other, I had often wondered about how the masters managed to acquire so much irrefutable knowledge. How do they know that their theories will work in the long run? I asked over and over. "Because they are based on accurate data," my professors would reply curtly. Belonging to the pre-artificial intelligence, pre-global village generation, I amused myself by imagining throngs of bespectacled economists trotting around the globe, asking relevant questions to millions of people and gathering information that they later duly enshrined in little notebooks. Complicated mathematical calculations must have necessarily ensued, producing the end results I was being asked to believe -- and learn. I did my best, but never managed to convince myself that they could come up with anything that would be of the remotest use to actual people. Having attempted to voice my doubts once or twice, I was interrupted by the looks of scorn or commiseration which I noticed in the eyes of my more brilliant classmates. Very soon I chose to keep my confusion to myself.
Forty years on, Professor Issawi recounted the following anecdote in Paths to the Middle East: Ten Scholars Look Back, a collection of essays edited by Thomas Naff. In so doing, he finally answered the nagging questions which had plagued my indoctrination. In 1948, while working for the UN, he was assigned to a budding Middle East Unit. Recognised as the expert in residence on the area, he was asked one day by two highly respected statisticians from the National Income Unit to give per capita income figures for the Middle East. He only had figures for Israel, but upon his colleagues' insistence, and having been promised that the figures would be for internal use only, he attempted a few educated guesses: "Eager to oblige, I started thinking. I had done enough work on Egypt to feel I could supply an approximate figure. 'Put $100 for Egypt,' I said, which they did. 'Turkey?' 'Rather better off than Egypt. Put $125 and also for Lebanon'... 'Syria?' 'A little worse off than Egypt...put $85.' 'Iraq?' 'The farmers are worse off than in Syria, but there is some income from oil, put $85.' 'Iran?' 'I haven't the foggiest idea, but Iran and Iraq sound so much alike, and both have oil, put $85.' 'What about Yemen?' 'What,' I asked, 'is your lowest figure for a member state?' 'Paraguay, $50,' they said. 'Put $40.'"
At the time, Issawi thought that this was the end of the matter. To his dismay, it was not; "in the spring of 1949, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) had a chapter on the Middle East in its Annual Survey. It began, 'The Middle East is a poor region -- here are some illustrative figures,' and proceeded to give my guesses!" In the fall of that year, Issawi went to Beirut with the Economic Survey Mission... "When the time came to write our report, someone asked, 'Are there any per capita income figures on the Middle East?' I tried to hide under the table, but some fool said, 'there are the FAO figures.' So my guesses came out in print and for the next few years found their way into all sorts of regressions and correlations... Fortunately by the mid-1950s more accurate estimates began to come out..."
