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in western economies, low-cost migrant workers are largely unavailable. When the economy booms, wages rise, forcing managers to think judiciously about hiring. During a recession, employment protections for citizens mean that redundancies are complicated and sometimes impossible. Consequently, managers focus a lot more on maximizing worker productivity through investments and employee training; and on developing new technologies that are commercially valuable.

the Gulf countries rank below every region in the world in terms of R&D spending as a percentage of GDP, and the limited spending is almost exclusively funded by the government, and occurs in governmental organizations, such as oil giants Aramco and ADNOC.

the fundamental error made by proponents of restrictions on migrant workers. Rather than making the case I made above, they make the erroneous claim that if Saudi Arabia bans migrant workers, Saudi businesses will hire nationals in their stead. We know that this is false empirically because all of the Gulf countries have tried this and it has failed. The failure was also expected because national and migrant workers are imperfect substitutes. It is tempting to attribute the attractiveness of migrant workers merely to their willingness to work for a lower wage, or to domestic businesses “lacking patriotism”; but this belies the genuine superiority of migrant workers in many relevant domains, including work ethic, willingness to perform jobs that locals are averse to (waiting tables, collecting refuse, etc.), and their possession of skills that nationals often lack.

Saudis are too often educated in the areas that help one get a cushy public sector job, and not in those that serve the private sector needs. This is most starkly seen in the limited success of vocational training, especially when compared to advanced economies such as Germany or Switzerland.

for crude restrictions on the employment of migrant workers to create jobs for Saudi citizens, they must be accompanied by upgrades to the human capital of Saudis that attend to the needs of the private sector

while the new system makes hiring foreign workers “instant”, the results of these comprehensive reforms will be anything but “instant”, requiring many years to bear fruit

Some of the most significant gains came in Europe where the bulk of Turkey’s 2,929,389-stong diaspora lives. Voting from abroad has only been possible since 2013 and the low turnout among diasporic citizens in 2014 suggests that politicians had not yet worked to mobilize them. In Holland, for example, where 8.6% of diasporic voters were registered at the time of the referendum, turnout was only 7.2% in 2014, but rose to 46.7% and 46.8% in November 1, 2015 and April 16, 2017, respectively. Though Erdoğan’s share of the vote in 2014 (78%) was higher than in either the AKP (69.7%) or the YES vote (70.9) received, the difference in turnouts makes comparison difficult. Moreover, Holland was part of a larger trend in 2017: of European countries with more than 10,000 diasporic voters only voters in Switzerland registered a decline in support for Erdoğan’s priorities.

a fractional number of voters who were willing to vote for the AKP over other parties and Erdoğan over other candidates were unwilling to give him sweeping powers.

Overall, the YES vote was 3.7 percentage points higher than the vote for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its November 2014 election. At the same time, the YES vote was 0.4 points lower than in the 2014 presidential election. Though Erdoğan achieved his goal of winning the election and securing additional powers, this feat may be pyrrhic: it was achieved with the help of an MHP leadership that has been shown to be out of touch with its own voters; it was achieved with diminished support in key regions like the Black Sea; it was achieved with increased support in southeast regions where tens of thousands of citizens did not reach the voting booth. President Erdoğan has successfully cobbled together a coalition of voters sizeable enough to win, but governing will be the greater challenge.