ARAB COUNTRIES: DEVELOPMENT MODEL CRISIS* V. A. MELYANTSEV Doctor of Economics, ISAA, Lomonosov Moscow State University Arab countries Keywords:, crisis, unstable growth, inequality, social protests The social explosion in the Arab countries (AU) is caused by many factors, but it is based on the crisis of the limited modernization model, which has led to the disproportionate, extensive and slow development of the region. Arab countries, we recall, did not always lag behind. By the 9th - 10th centuries AD, the region had a relatively high level of development of trade, crafts, culture, religious and secular education. According to our calculations, in the XI century AD, Egypt, lagging behind China in terms of per capita GDP by about a quarter, was more than one and a half times higher than the then Western Europe (WE). By Human Development Index (HDI)** Egypt, a third behind China, was almost twice as fast as the ZE. The average grain yield in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, although it was about a third lower than in Chinese China, was 4-5 times higher than the same indicator in the West. The level of urbanization in MENA was one and a half times higher than in ZE (excluding Spain). In 900 AD, five of the world's ten largest cities were Muslim. While lagging behind China in terms of literacy by about half, the MENA countries as a whole were 4 to 5 times ahead of the WE (1 to 3%). By 1000 AD, the share of Muslims in the world (14-15%) was already two-fifths greater than that of Christians (10-11%). The subsequent (by 1800 - almost three - fold, by 1913-1950 - four-fold) lag of the AU from Western countries in the level of per capita income (see graph. 1) and HDI was caused, on the one hand, by the economic recovery of Western countries, which in the 2nd millennium AD formed institutions that contributed to the rapid growth of physical, human capital and labor productivity, and on the other - by a significant slowdown in development in MENA. The lat ... Read more