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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Despite being a fixture of everyday life in the Arab world, wasta, which may be thought of as special influence by members of the same group or tribe, has received little attention from social scientists. Our casual empiricism suggests that wasta is an important determinant of how economic activities are organized and resources are allocated in Middle Eastern societies, yet economists, even those who specialize in work related to the Middle East, have not addressed the issue of wasta. With this paper we provide a modest beginning to filling that void. Specifically, we use the history of wasta, Hayek's concept of extended order and Coase's work on the nature of the firm to draw inferences regarding the existence of wasta and its persistence in Arab societies.JEL Classification: D21, K20, N45

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Concern about global climate change has elicited responses from governments around the world. These responses began with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and have continued with other negotiations, including the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. These negotiations raised important questions about whether countries will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, if so, how the burden of emissions reductions will be shared. To investigate these questions, we utilize environmental Kuznets curves for carbon emissions for the G8 plus five main developing countries. Our findings raise doubts about the feasibility of reducing global carbon emissions and shed light on the different positions taken by countries on the distribution of emissions reductions.The authors express thanks to Roger E. Meiners, Jeffrey Pompe, Jerry Slice, Robert D. Tollison, two anonymous referees, an associate editor of this journal, and the editor of this journal for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Any remaining errors are our own.