where to shopping in UAE

Aptly known as a shopper’s paradise, there is something for everyone to buy in the UAE. Bargains abound but you do need to know where to look.

Gold
A visit to any of the gold souqs or gold centres is an absolute must. All cities have dedicated gold souqs as well as an assortment of individual stores in upmarket malls. The range is largest in the souqs, and indeed many exclusive jewellery boutiques are based in the souq. You will find row upon row of shops with dazzling displays of gold jewellery in every conceivable design and purity: Eighteen- and 22-carat are common, but 24-karat is also available, although the deep yellow hue of the high-carat jewellery is not to everyone’s taste. If you wish you can also purchase kilo bars, ten tola bars, small minted bars and gold bullion bars. The basic cost of the gold is set by weight daily – check the daily prices in the local newspapers. But be aware that the quoted price does not include ‘making changes’, the cost of which varies according to shop and style of jewellery. Most products are not necessarily as cheap as you would expect when comparing items of similar appearance in Europe to the UAE – but pick the piece up and you will understand why the price is as it is, most jewellery made and sold here is solid and so you are literally getting twice as much, or more, gold for your money.

Precious gems and pearls, along with a wide selection of costume jewellery are also readily available.

Visit the extended Gold and Diamond Park in Al Quoz, Dubai (04 3477788 www.goldanddiamondpark.com). Apart from a spectacular array of gems and gold you can watch craftsmen at work. Located off Sheikh Zayed Highway at Interchange No. 4. The Gold Centre at Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre in Abu Dhabi also houses an extensive range of jewellery.

Spices

In the spice souqs, sacks of exotic spices spill out into the narrow alleyways, filling the area with a heady aroma.
Try some of the following:
Bezar - a mix of Arabian spices
Cumin (kamoun)
Coriander(jiljalan) can be fresh greenleaves, seeds or ground.
Cardamom (hal) pick pods that are pale brown or green in colour. Good for flavouring gahwa (Arab coffee)
Cinnamon (jerfah)
Cloves (mismar)
Turmeric (curcum)
Saffron(zaffran), considered to be the most expensive spice in the world, is actually a crocus stigma. An important flavouring agent in Arabic cookery.
Rosewater and orange blossom water (myeward wa mye al-zahr) distilled from the flower petals – a traditional Arab flavouring for deserts, pastries and salads.
Chilli powder(filfil ahmar ) used in moderation in Arabic cookery.
Ginger (zanjabeel) a popular ingredient in many Middle Eastern dishes; it is also served infused in milk as a night-time drink.
Pine nuts (sanobar)
Buying in bulk in the souq may not be practical for everyone, however you can divide amongst friends when you get home. Gifts of fresh spices are always welcome. Jars of mixed spices also make attractive gifts.

Sacks of frankincense line most alleyways in spice souqs. Frankincense was once more valuable than gold and the world’s most expensive fragrance, Amouage, contains the finest frankincense from Oman. The clearer the crystals the better the frankincense. Traditional burners make superb presents and it’s worth trying several different types of frankincense before choosing. Oud, the rare scented wood is also sold in perfume shops. It can be mixed with frankincense to waft a wonderful scent when burnt.

Fabrics and Textiles
Some of the finest silks from the Far East are to be found in the UAE. Fabrics are normally good value and high quality. Pashminas are a popular purchase and are readily available. Be careful, though, they can vary hugely in quality and price and make sure to bargain.

Carpets

No visit to Arabia is complete without a trip to a carpet store. There are carpet outlets in most shopping centres but, for the essential flavour of the region, a trip to the carpet souq is a must. The Blue Souq in Sharjah, offers the widest range of carpets at the keenest prices, but most carpet souqs will carry an assortment of ancient and modern carpets. The finest carpets come from Iran – the traditional Persian carpets. Handmade from silk, an authentic carpet will bear the signature of its creator woven into the design. The designs are many, each individual and many specific to particular families or tribes. 

Persian carpets are at the top of the price scale and many are so exquisite that putting them on the floor is practically unthinkable. There are many cheaper options, most just as hard wearing. India, Kashmir, Pakistan and to a lesser degree Afghanistan all produce high quality carpets. Many are copies of Persian designs but some are original. Most carpet traders are knowledgeable about their wares and will be happy to explain the difference between a machine made or handwoven carpet and describe in detail how carpets are made and from which villages they originate.

Check the knots per square inch, the higher the number the greater the quality; whether it is hand or machine made and whether natural or artificial dyes have been used. Do shop around, take your time, and remember to bargain.

If you are unable to choose the perfect carpet first time there is no need to worry. Most traders will buy carpets back or swap them for similar products. Traditionally carpets are intended to last a lifetime, indeed many on sale are far older.

Some souqs, especially the roadside versions, stock lurid copies of Persian designs but these are very easy to distinguish from originals.

Traditional Goods

Souqs and antique shops stock wonderful old oriental carpets, exotic wall hangings, elegant Arabic coffeepots made of hand-beaten copper, carved wooden chests, ornamental khanjars (traditional daggers), chunky silver jewellery, shishas, intricate jewellery boxes, woven camel-hair goods, worry beads and brass. Good quality antique goods are available. However many items are reproductions. 

Asian tapestries are readily available and make superb wall-hangings and table runners. Embroidered Syrian cushions add a touch of luxury to all sofas and many come with matching tablecloths.

Some of the best buys are to be found in warehouse discount stores. Beware of paying inflated prices for ‘antique’ furniture in shopping centres – most are not truly antique and nearly all are available for far less in the warehouse stores. Try Khan & Sons (06 5681319), Al Barjeel Furniture (06 5621621), Pinky’s (06 5341714) and Lucky’s (06 5341937), all in Sharjah. Most of the furniture is from Rajasthan, and it is advisable to phone for directions as all shops have huge warehouses full of stock.

Electronic Goods

Generally speaking electronic and computer products are considerably cheaper in the UAE. There are several superstores in major malls offering just about everything that plugs in and plays, as well as numerous smaller outlets that are extremely well stocked.

Some of the best bargains are to be found at the Carrefour hypermarkets – in Dubai, Sharjah, Al Ain, Ajman, Ra’s al-Khaimah and Abu Dhabi. Plug Ins, with a number of branches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi is an Aladdin’s cave of electronic wonders while Jumbo Electronics, with several stores in Dubai, offers some of the best prices in town.

Those in search of computers and computer peripherals are also well catered for. As the home of Gitex, the Middle East’s largest IT exhibition held annually in October, Dubai, in particular,is a techno-shopping paradise. Most stores offer a good after sales service and pricing is so competitive between stores that shopping around has almost become a thing of the past.

Camera Equipment

All camera equipment is generally very good value in the UAE. Again, the major malls have well equipped camera stores. The stores most commonly frequented by professionals arein Dubai. Grand Stores (04 3523641) are agents for Nikon and Fuji, Salam Stores (04 3245252) sells the best range of photographic accessories in the UAE as well as being the agents for Pentax, Hasselblad, Tamron and Sigma. Central Stores are the Canon agents. 

Watches

Watches of all sorts, shapes, sizes and prices are on sale throughout the UAE. The variety is infinite and the prices are good. If you are looking for a particular model or brand, it is a good idea to do some research at home before shopping in the UAE so that you have a price reference when you decide to purchase.

Designer Goods

Designer goods from all over the world are readily available in shopping malls and boutiques. Clothes, shoes and bags are popular items. Again, it is worth pricing certain items in your home market before purchasing in the UAE.

Perfume

Every conceivable perfume is available in the UAE. Large perfume stores sell all the Western brands at very good prices. Smaller shops in the souqs stock local perfumes, a fragrant mix of Arabian oil blended to suit your requirements, but beware they are strong! You can also purchase incense such as frankincense

Fresh Vegetables and Fish

The souqs specializing in vegetables and fish are well worth a visit to view the enormous selection of produce and drink in the atmosphere of the bustling marketplace even if you do not want to make a purchase. 

Fresh fish from Gulf waters are landed in the early morning and late at night and the fish souqs are busiest on Thursdays, Fridays, and on public holidays. You will probably be approached by a helper who, for a small fee will carry your bags, bargain for you if you wish to purchase a fish and even arrange to have your fish filleted and scaled. Hamour (grouper), hamra (red snapper), zubeidi (pomfret), jodar (tuna), cigalees (similar to crayfish), lobster, prawns, crayfish and even shark are some of the varieties on offer. Be careful as the ground in the fish souq is usually wet and slippery.

Fruit and vegetables are both imported and home-grown – try the local strawberries cultivated near Dhaid, they are absolutely delicious.

Food

Frozen and pre-packaged goods from almost every corner of the globe are widely available. All of the large supermarket chains such as Carrefour, Spinneys, Géant and Waitrose stock a wide range of western brands whilst stores such as Choithram, Lulu, Al Maya and others cater to every nationality.

China is the only nuclear weapon state expanding its nuclear arsenal

The global arsenal of nuclear arms is shrinking. And yet China appears to be the only internationally sanctioned nuclear weapon power that’s increasing its stockpile. China has added about 10 warheads to its nuclear arsenal in the past year, according to a report by the Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The addition of warheads could be troubling considering China’s quickly modernizing military, now the world’s second largest by spending. In a defense paper last month Chinese defense officials omitted a promise it has maintained since the 1960s to never initiate the use of nuclear weapons. And in December of last year, Xi Jinping said China’s nuclear weapons were “a strategic pillar of our great power status. That’s a sharp break from previous Chinese officials who have downplayed the country’s nuclear capabilities, according to James Acton, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who wrote an editorial (paywall) on the topic.

China’s arsenal of an estimated 250 warheads is small compared to those of Russia and the US, home to about 8,500 and 7,700 warheads respectively. (Of note: China is considered the least transparent of the official nuclear armed states about its nuclear forces. Some US and Russian academics have said that the country’s arsenal could be much larger, up to 3,000 warheads, but US military officials have dismissed the higher estimates.)

Acton writes that the likelihood of nuclear escalation with China is low and that Beijing may just be responding to security issues like North Korea’s most recent threats of war or increased US military presence in the region. That said, even if the chance of escalation is low, the costs are high, considering China’s territorial rows with Japan, India and several Southeast Asian nations.

At the beginning of the year, the worldwide arsenal was an estimated 17,265 warheads, down from 19,000 at the beginning of 2012. The reduction reflects the weapons reduction by the US and Russia under bilateral arms control treaties. The UK and France left their stockpiles unchanged. Pakistan and India, which aren’t considered nuclear weapon states, expanded their stockpiles and missile delivery. Under the non-proliferation treaty of 1970, only five countries—Russia, the US, France, the UK, and China—are allowed to possess nuclear weapons and considered nuclear weapon states.

Now that Americans are buying homes, Detroit’s Big Three are coming back

Detroit’s Big Three made a comeback in May after a disappointing April.

Ford led the way with a 14 percent increase in sales, while Chrysler’s sales grew 11 percent, largely because of strong demand for pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles. Sales of Ford’s F-series pickup trucks were up 31 percent, while Chrysler’s Ram trucks reported a 24 percent increase. Even GM, which posted a modest three percent overall sales growth, reported strong sales for its Chevy Silverado.

Here’s why the boom in pickup sales (which helped US automakers outpace their Japanese and Korean rivals) is likely to continue:

1) Demand for light trucks has increased as housing has recovered, spurring growth in construction.

2) Consumers are responding to models that feature new technologies and improved fuel efficiency. Ford sold more hybrid vehicles in the first five months of 2013 than it has in any full year in its history. The Big Three have rolled out new or revamped models like the Ford Fusion, Chevy Dart and Cadillac ATS. GM has vowed to update 61% of its product line in two years.

3) Detroit’s Asian competitors are struggling. South Korea’s Hyundai & Kia are trying to repair their reputation, following findings by the the U.S. Environment Protection Agency that the companies overstated fuel economy ratings.

That said, in Japan, Abenomics is helping to boost sales for some carmakers. Nissan used the weakening yen to its advantage last month by offering heavy discounts to US consumers on seven of its top models; its sales increased 25 percent year-over-year in May. That hasn’t been the case for Toyota, the most successful Japanese carmaker in the U.S. Sales of two of its top three leading brands—Prius and Camry, have been flagging this year. The company has blamed falling fuel prices, and general boredom with the dowdy Camry.

The huge misconception at the heart of “too big to fail”

As banks continue to swell in size, the public might conclude that legislators have gone back on their promise to never again let a bank grow “too big to fail.” But making banks smaller was never what legislators—most of them, anyway—had in mind.

American banks? Those things that were nearly wiped out during the financial crisis? They’re doing just fine, thank you. In the first quarter of 2013, they posted their highest profits ever—a total of $40.3 billion, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced yesterday.

With unemployment still so high, the banks’ success is hard for the public to swallow. Some are now larger than they were before the financial crisis. Critics allege that the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and other regulators have done nothing to prevent banks from growing “too big to fail,” the presumed problem at the heart of the crisis. In fact, people like Elizabeth Warren, the US senator and crusader for banking reform, have argued that large Wall Street banks even enjoy a “subsidy” over smaller ones—some $83 billion—since they benefit from an implicit promise that, should they fail, the government will bail them out.

And yet, regulators and policymakers who supported the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (pdf), the law designed to fix the causes of the crisis, argue vehemently that it has ended ”too big to fail”, or is well on the way to doing so. So how can they make such a claim?

Because it’s a misconception that regulators ever had the explicit goal of making massive, complex financial institutions smaller. The focus was never on the “big” part; it was on the “fail” part. Dodd-Frank—introduced in late 2009 and passed in 2010–was meant to create a path that would allow banks and other “systematically important” financial institutions of any size to fail—i.e., cease to exist in name—without causing permanent damage to the US financial system. And in fact, these very policies are most cumbersome for the very smallest banks, and encourage them to get bigger.
The birth of TBTF

The real seeds of “too big to fail” were planted in the previous mega-crisis—the Great Depression. The FDIC was created as part of the Banking Act of 1933 to prevent runs on vulnerable banks. It now protects the first $250,000 in every deposit account at the FDIC’s member banks (which number around 7,000). This had an immediate stabilizing effect. So long as depositors knew their money was safe even if the bank failed, then they wouldn’t rush to withdraw their funds at the first whiff of trouble.

But at the same time, deposit insurance was the first in a long line of policies that made the government progressively more liable for financial institutions’ losses.

First, the insurance slowly expanded to cover virtually 100% of deposits held at the nation’s biggest banks—not just those initially insured by the FDIC. Realizing that this heaped a lot of the burden for a crisis on the public purse, policymakers in 1991 passed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Improvement Act (FDICIA). That bill made a bank’s uninsured depositors and creditors more likely to take losses if it defaulted. But it also created an important loophole: if regulators believed that an institution’s failure would damage the greater financial system and economy, they could bail it out.

With hindsight, of course, this seems crazy: a classic setup for “moral hazard.” Yet policymakers at the time believed they were making banks safer—in fact, infallible. The reasoning went like this: If the government promised never to let a big bank fail, then investors and depositors would never fear that it would fail, they would never make a run on its assets, and it would never need a bailout.

Policymakers evidently never imagined that the promise of a bailout would tempt megabanks into taking outsized risks. It was as if a ship’s captain were to decide that caulking a ship to make it watertight empowered him to sail it into a Category 5 hurricane. In fact, that’s exactly what the banks’ captains decided.

  

Crisis measures: Dodd-Frank and Basel III

The Obama administration rushed into Washington, DC, in 2009 in a mad dash to plug the financial system’s holes and batten down the hatches. When Lehman Brothers had collapsed in the previous September, shortly before Barack Obama’s election, neither the government nor the financial sector had stood behind it, thereby undermining the promise made by the FDICIA. The bank’s failure taught the incoming government a lesson: Financial instruments tied to Lehman were suddenly of questionable value, and the bank’s employees and units were left in limbo. Its disorderly failure set off a global financial crisis, and it was clear that the same thing could not be allowed to happen again. Policymakers needed a new system.

Luckily, they had lots of material from which to draw ideas. Since the failure of Continental Illinois in 1984—nationalized to prevent the failure of national money markets—economists had criticized laws, like the FDICIA, that almost explicitly allowed big banks to rely on the good graces of the taxpayer. Their criticism, though, was mainly against the principle of shielding banks from the discipline of the markets. The size of those banks was a secondary issue.

The proposed fixes were always pretty much the same: Create a system in which even the largest banks can fail and won’t need a taxpayer bailout. For this to happen, banks had to have more cash on hand (capital). With more cash, economists figured, they would be better prepared to absorb losses from a bad bet.

Now, it’s true that increasing the amount of capital banks must hold will tend to make banks—and the banking industry as a whole—smaller. That’s because holding capital is expensive. If you’re forced to keep a certain percentage of your money in a savings account, you can’t invest it all. This, regulators felt, would encourage banks to get rid of some of their less profitable businesses, because the profits didn’t outweigh the costs.

However, this was seen as a side-effect of such policy, rather than the goal. As John H. Boyd and Arthur J. Rolnick wrote in the Minneapolis Fed’s 1988 annual report:

To the extent that bank owners are risk-averse and cannot completely diversify their investments, more capital helps to offset the incentive to risk taking because owners have more at stake. The second effect is less direct and considerably more subtle. Other things equal, a higher capital requirement will reduce the expected losses of the FDIC, effectively reducing the net subsidy to banking due to deposit insurance. Reducing this subsidy will cause some shrinkage of the banking industry—either as banks cut back on marginally profitable lending or as marginally profitable banks are driven out of business.

Minneapolis Fed researchers would continue to harp on the issue over the next two decades, to the yawns of other economists. They argued that the US government had to say explicitly that uninsured depositors would take losses if a bank failed. They argued that banks needed more capital. And they argued that some of banks’ debt had to be issued for longer periods than it was (investment banks have traditionally funded themselves by issuing very short-term debt), so that banks’ assets wouldn’t suddenly disappear if their counterparties got nervous and refused to continue financing the bank.

And these provisions were at the heart of Dodd-Frank: Be explicit about how the government will manage a bank bankruptcy; create a “resolution authority” that can sustain and manage a failing bank’s liquidation; and force banks to prepare for it by reorganizing their funding and capital structure.

Dodd-Frank, like the Basel III international financial accords also passed in 2010, espouses a simple purpose: Banks, no matter their size, should be able to fail. Dodd-Frank’s Title II spells out how a massive bank can be wound down under FDIC supervision. Shareholders, creditors, and unsecured depositors take losses in order to keep the untainted pieces functioning. ”Breaking up” banks is a last resort, to be taken only upon liquidation or some impossibly severe threat to the system. Dodd-Frank spells out steps banks must take to prepare for that, like writing living wills, issuing long-term debt, and holding on to capital. The idea is to prevent a disorderly Lehman-style failure—to keep a bank functioning on life-support as its various organs are calmly removed and sold or carefully liquidated.

Dodd-Frank is still far from full implementation. Of the 398 rules regulators were supposed to come up with, they’ve finalized only 153 (pdf). Another 116 rules have been proposed but are still coming down the pipeline, and regulators have yet to propose 129 regulations that would actually put all of Dodd-Frank into place. Basel III, too, is still a faraway dream: The accords will one day force banks to hold capital equal to 7% of their risk-weighted assets, but continuing weakness in the European banking sector and different standards for how to measure the risk of assets have delayed regulators in implementing even the first stage of the agreement.

The infamous “subsidy”

Criticisms of Dodd-Frank come from both small banks and big ones. For the small banks, for instance, regulations require extra paperwork that imposes oppressive legal costs. Mergers have helped these banks save money, but it’s also meant that they’ve gotten larger.

Small banks’ key objection, however, is the $83 billion “subsidy” big banks supposedly get in funding markets. This subsidy comes about, ostensibly, because the assumption that the banks will get a taxpayer bailout if they fail lowers their borrowing costs by an average of 0.8%. Multiplied by their total liabilities, that adds up to $83 billion.

Dodd-Frank is based on research that sought to eradicate this funding advantage. It’s not clear that it has done so; both the analysis that produced that $83 billion figure and the banking industry’s response are based on data collected before economic reforms were enacted.

But even after the rules have changed to let big banks fail, investors may not truly believe that the government will let it happen, until it actually does. ”A surprising amount of progress has been made, though nobody in the markets believes it…in this [too-big-to-fail] case, Dodd-Frank is ahead of the curve,” former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said at a conference recently. He suggested that the success of Dodd-Frank can only be really measured once a big bank fails.  ”If the resolution authority was a complete success, we’d never have to use it!”

And even if investors believe big banks will truly be allowed to fail, big banks will probably still get a better deal in the funding markets than smaller ones. Big multinational banks are more diversified than small community banks by nature. A community bank takes a sharp and direct hit when a local manufacturer decides to move overseas; people lose their jobs and default on their mortgages, property values dip, and the local bank gets stuck holding the bill. By contrast, while a local branch of JP Morgan Chase may report poor numbers, JP Morgan Chase as a company will probably be unaffected. So it’s no surprise that big banks can borrow at cheaper rates than small ones; big ones are by nature better at weathering all but the largest economic shocks.

Meanwhile, the big banks too have objections to Dodd-Frank. Both Dodd-Frank and Basel III rely heavily on the idea that holding more capital will help banks stomach losses and prevent a failure in the first place. But as we’ve already said, holding capital is costly and could force banks to drop certain kinds of business. A Deutsche Bank report says that new regulations could make numerous big banks leave full-service fixed income, and currency and commodities sales and trading. JP Morgan analysts wrote last month that large multinational investment banks will be “un-investable,” because new rules will take such a toll on their profitability. So far, the country’s biggest seven banks haven’t gotten smaller since Dodd-Frank went into effect, but they’re not growing rapidly.

More to fix?

As we’ve said, Dodd-Frank is all about the “fail” part of too-big-to-fail. And yet, the idea of breaking up big banks is not quite dead in Washington. In April, Senators Sherrod Brown and David Vitter introduced a bill that would encourage the biggest banks to break up. It does it by imposing extra capital requirements on banks that are larger than $500 billion in assets.

But the Brown-Vitter bill is unlikely to fly. Any politicians who might want to back it are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they are honest about its goals—and anyone who follows financial services knows that the proposal essentially strong-arms big banks into cutting themselves down (pdf)—they risk losing Wall Street donations and incurring the wrath of lobbyists. So they have been forced to argue that it wouldn’t explicitly break up big banks—and that means they can’t generate popular support for it. Besides, the bill would effectively take the US out of the international Basel III accord, and thus destroy cooperation between international regulators.

There are many other criticisms of Dodd-Frank. Banks still aren’t holding enough capital, or the right kind of capital, to protect themselves from destabilizing losses. Market discipline cannot function in a market where we know so little about how exposed banks are. Regulators don’t know how to spot systemic risk before it becomes a problem. Regulators won’t be able to follow the road map they’ve laid out. Banks don’t fund themselves in a healthy manner, and can still fail if that funding dries up suddenly.

But none of the answers to these problems has to do with size per se. Two of too-big-to-fail’s most vehement critics since the early 2000s, Gary Stern and Ron Feldman of the Minneapolis Fed, wrote in 2009 (pdf), “If we exclusively embrace a reform that misleadingly promises victory over TBTF by constraining the size of large financial firms, we may squander the time and resources needed to address the problem at its roots.” Dodd-Frank is the fruit of that decision.

Q:When it comes to salary negotiations?, ask for a precise number

Next time you’re negotiating, don’t offer up a round number. Pick a precise one instead.

Because if you give a specific figure in euros or dollars or yen, you’ll look more intelligent and informed—and likely end up with a better outcome, according to new research from Columbia Business School.

“Precise numbers are these potent anchors,” said Malia F. Mason, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of management at Columbia Business School. She argues that asking for $52,000 or €95,500, for example, can be far more effective than the more commonly used round numbers like $50,000 or €100,000.

Giving an exact number implies “the state of your knowledge” on whatever you’re valuing and also conveys your confidence that it’s appropriate, the professors report in a study about to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The approach could work whether you’re buying something on Craigslist or even negotiating a new salary, though the researchers did not look at pay in the six studies they did, Mason said in an interview with Quartz.

“It should apply to any negotiation that involves quantity” including your pay rate, said Mason. When you’re being recruited for a job, though, salary is just one part of the discussion, she added. Mason teaches managerial negotiation classes and researches how people understand each others’ attitudes and explain their behavior.

So how precise do you want to be? “Know that the numbers that you use imply something about the state of your knowledge. Be a little more precise than you’d otherwise be,” Mason said.

Overly precise numbers do carry some risks and downsides, and may be perceived as signaling inflexibility or could trigger skepticism if the other party already has doubts about your expertise, the authors say. Still, in six studies involving experienced managers, MBA students and undergraduates, the precise figures generally brought better counteroffers.

Mason got the idea for the research on precision while taking a taxi in Prague. Her cab driver asker her for a 1,000 korunas fare. Though she admits she didn’t know how far away her hotel was from the train station, “it felt like the fare came from no where… like he pulled it out of a hat,” she said. With several cabbies in the area, she found another and recalls paying around 700 korunas instead.  “I was with a friend who knows I teach negotiation,” she recalled. So afterward they dissected the experience in detail, and from there the research commenced.

“People love rules and recipes for success in negotiation,” said Mason. Yet many of them are “full of it” because they don’t consider the context and the goals.

If all you care about is getting a very high price, “then it helps if you make the opening offer, and you make an extreme opening offer… It almost exerts a gravitational pull,” she said . Of course, it could also cause the other side to walk away.

Instead, set a high but but slightly less extreme and precise number and you’ll do better in your negotiations.

When you give a precise sum, say $10,500 for the two-month contract, make sure you can explain why you named that number. “Seeming informed is one thing,” said Mason. “Being informed is far better.”

Getting paid by your employer to be healthy works—except when it doesn’t

When a 2014 portion of the Affordable Care Act comes into effect, employers will be able to use financial rewards and penalties to encourage healthier behaviors. Last week the Obama administration released its final rules regarding these employer-based wellness programs.

Still, critics are concerned that an annual premium adjustment isn’t likely to change behavior, and will just end up penalizing those with poorer health.

According to Dr. Kevin Volpp, Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, it isn’t as simple as just paying someone for doing the right thing. People tend to respond to immediate, short-term rewards (e.g. the satisfaction of eating one more piece of pizza) more readily than to delayed consequences (weight gain). The science of “behavioral economics” has found that when people are offered immediate incentives and penalties to do the healthy thing, they are more likely to make the right decision, sort of like having a swear jar for healthy living.

But not all incentives are created equal, and some behaviors are harder to change (e.g. quitting smoking) than others (taking your kid for a routine check up). The impact of an incentive depends a lot on how it is framed, and the context in which it’s offered.

People also respond differently to rewards and penalties. Volpp studies show how different types, sizes, and frequencies of incentives impact people’s behavior.

In one study, Volpp and colleagues teamed up with General Electric to develop financial incentives to get employees to quit smoking. All smokers received information about smoking-cessation programs, but half were chosen at random to also receive financial incentives. In the financial incentive group, smokers were given $100 for completing a smoking-cessation informational program, $250 for quitting smoking within six months of joining the study, and $400 if they were still not smoking six months after they quit.

The smokers in the incentive group were three times more likely to join a smoking-cessation program, and three times more likely to quit smoking than those who were not offered financial rewards. But when GE rolled these financial incentives to quit smoking to the rest of their workforce, employees complained about rewarding smokers to do something they should be doing anyway. From their perspective, GE turned the program into a penalty rather than reward program.

“If you make it all about rewarding smokers, you’ll predictably get the reaction, ‘No, we shouldn’t be rewarding smokers, we should penalize them,’” Volpp said. But we already are paying for the health consequences of other people smoking, eating poorly or not exercising. According to him, the response to the financial incentive might have been different if GE had done a better job of explaining to its workforce that getting employees to quit smoking would also save money for everyone else.

Volpp also cautioned that you have to be careful about overusing penalties if you are trying to help people improve their health. Penalties can create distrust and drive unhealthy behaviors underground, making them that much harder to tackle.

***

King County, Washington, was one of the first local governments to use rewards and penalties to encourage healthier behaviors. A decade ago, the county panicked as health care costs were growing at a pace of 15 percent every year. Then-executive Ron Sims convened a task force that included physicians, health care policy and legal experts, economists and labor and business leaders to develop a strategy to address health care costs from the perspective of both patients and the employers paying for their coverage.

Sims told the Seattle Times at the time, ”I refuse to sit back and allow the county and its employees to be victims of these seemingly uncontrollable cost increases. Further, I refuse to accept there are only two choices: reducing benefits to our employees and their families, or paying crippling annual increases. Tweaking the edges of the problem will no longer work.”

Out of the task force’s recommendations was borne Healthy Incentives—a voluntary wellness program for its employees and their families. While everyone receives the same medical benefits coverage, their out-of-pocket costs (deductibles and co-pays) vary according to their level of participation in the Healthy Incentives program. Those who choose not to participate receive a Bronze status, with the highest out-of-pocket costs. To attain a Gold status, with the lowest out-of-pocket costs, you need to complete a health risk assessment and complete a personal wellness plan. The individual action plans might include texting in a log of healthy activities, joining Weight Watchers at Work, attending YMCA classes to learn how to prevent diabetes through nutrition and exercise, or working with a Quit for Life coach on the phone to quit smoking. The difference between the Bronze and Gold tiers can make a difference of as much as $2,400 per year for a family of four.

When she started working for King County three years ago, Lynn Argento was automatically enrolled in the Gold tier after completing her health risk assessment. Failing to complete her personal wellness plan, Argento got bumped down to the Silver level the following year. “It was an eye opener in terms of the differences that I was paying for my deductible and co-pays,” she said. “It was a big reminder that my wellness activities had a significant financial connection to what I was paying out-of-pocket.” But Argento wasn’t upset with King County. She was disappointed in herself. “It was pretty clearly laid out to me. I knew what I needed to do, and I didn’t follow through on it,” she said.

Argento resolved to earn back her status. She runs on a treadmill during her lunch breaks at a worksite activity center, where employees can also attend yoga, tai chi, Zumba and kickboxing classes. Argento’s husband is now also on her plan, which means that he too has to participate in wellness activities to earn Gold status. Argento has noticed not only the financial but also health benefits of her wellness activities. “I have a lot more stamina,” she said. “I often have to sprint for a bus because I’m running late, and now I can do that without wanting to pass out when I get to the bus.”

Argento also used to miss a couple days of work or leave the office early each month due to migraines, but the frequency of her migraines has gone down significantly since she started eating regular, healthier meals to complement her training schedule. And the Healthy Incentives program has been self-reinforcing. Argento and her co-workers talk about work-life balance and making space for wellness during the workday.

During the first five years of the program, 38 percent of obese participants lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, and almost a quarter lost at least 10 percent. Smoking rates dropped from 12 percent to 7 percent, which is lower than both national and state averages. Between 2007 and 2011 King County saved $14.6 million due to the improved health of its employees and their families. According to Brooke Bascom with the Healthy Incentives program, “It is so much better than cutting people off and making health care inaccessible. We give them the support they need to make changes.”

The state of Oregon, like King County, saw a need to reign in its health care costs, having spent $1.6 billion on costs related to obesity alone in 2006. The Oregon Educators Benefit Board and Oregon Public Employee’s Benefit Board, which provide health insurance coverage to the state’s teachers and public employees, have also used financial incentives to encourage healthier behaviors. During the first year of the program, they charged employees $17.50 per month if they failed to take a baseline health risk assessment and follow through on recommendations. 70 percent of employees completed their health assessment and took the suggested health actions. With a switch the following year to a reward of $17.50 per month per person for participation and a $100 higher deductible per person for those not participating, 7 percent more employees completed wellness recommendations. Through a combination of these financial incentives and a partnership with Weight Watchers, rates of obesity decreased from 28 percent to 22 percent among the state’s teachers between 2009 and 2012, at a time when rates of obesity were increasing among the general population.

Employers’ interest in using worksite wellness and incentive programs is expanding rapidly, but not all have the resources to develop their own, so some outsource to companies like The Vitality Group, which relies on behavioral economics to structure programs. Vitality might track your gym visits, activity using pedometers and accelerometers and attendance at Weight Watchers meetings, and in exchange you earn redeemable points that can be used to purchase items—movie tickets, iTunes gift certificates, hotel stays—from the Vitality Mall. Your behaviors also earn you points towards your Vitality Status. The higher your Vitality Status, the more prizes you are entitled to win.

Vitality recently partnered with Walmart to offer members a 5 percent credit on purchases of healthy foods that can be used towards future purchases at Walmart — another immediate reward for a healthy action. But one of Vitality’s greatest successes in the U. S. was in partnership with Alcon Labs, which involved not just the incentive program, but creation of a comprehensive wellness program.

A key feature of this program were “Vitality Champs,” employees who volunteered to be trained to lead and encourage their co-workers in wellness activities and to organize events, ranging from 5K run/walks to mobile mammography screening to flu shot campaigns. And those people are the key to these programs. We are influenced by the people around us, and when there’s a culture of health in the workplace, we are more likely to do the healthy thing ourselves.

“Incentive programs are not wellness programs,” said Dr. Ronald Goetzel, Director of Emory University’s Institute for Health and Productivity Research and President and CEO of The Health Project. “That can be a component, when done smartly, of a comprehensive program, but if that’s all your program is going to be, you’re going to fail miserably, and people are going to be resentful,” he explained. According to Goetzel — who has studied worksite wellness programs at large corporations such as Dow Chemical and Johnson & Johnson, and is being funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study best practices in the field—incentive programs can help get people excited about health and keep them on track, but ultimately people’s habits will only change if they are given the resources to change them and if the workplace norms and environments change.

Without the other pieces to facilitate behavior change—healthy cafeterias, opportunities to exercise, flexible work hours, supportive leadership and middle managers, and health risk assessments and coaching—incentive programs will only penalize, not change, those who are least healthy.

India’s voracious gold appetite needs trimming

The legendary Indian obsession with purchasing gold has been passed down for generations. Families purchase gold on auspicious religious occasions and, in larger quantities, for weddings. It forms a significant part of savings, particularly in rural areas, and is passed down to future generations.
Today, however, it is also being credited as one of the main reasons for India’s spiralling current account deficit, which has widened to a record 6.7 per cent of GDP in the latest period. A country’s current account is the sum of its balance of trade — in other words, net revenue on exports minus payments for imports.
India imports vast quantities of gold to cater to its local demand and, at a time when the global economy is still sluggish, Indian firms are unable to export as much as they used to. The net result is the spiralling deficit, which is chiefly responsible for the drag on the exchange rate of the Indian rupee.
Since the government cannot do much about boosting exports in a slow global market, the focus is on cutting imports. But as India’s chief economic adviser, Raghuram Rajan, has pointed out, there is not much that the government can do about the country’s vast imports of oil or coal — both of which are essential for the energy needs and ensuring the smooth functioning of the economy. Gold imports, on the other hand, are unproductive investments.

When international gold prices softened earlier this year, many were hopeful that India would spend less on imports, thereby narrowing the current account deficit and strengthening the currency. However, the lower prices sparked a massive buying spree. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, it is estimated that gold imports saw a 130 per cent year-on-year increase in April, at a time when prices were down 10 per cent year-on-year. The staggering rise in volumes has further widened the deficit and brought it to a dangerous high.
Insatiable appetite
The only solution will be trying to curb India’s insatiable appetite for the metal, and the Finance Ministry has been trying every trick in the book. Over the last 18 months, the import tax on gold has been raised from 2 per cent to 6 per cent and the rupee has depreciated as well, both of which drive up the cost to the consumer. As a further measure, the Reserve Bank announced that only jewellery exporters would be allowed to use credit for gold imports.
But even as further measures are expected, the programme has not had a strong impact — demand refuses to slow. Moreover, many argue that tightened restrictions and higher import costs for gold will have adverse consequences.
If demand for gold savings continues to persist, these measures will give a fillip to a dormant smuggling industry that will seek to profit. As many a Bollywood film’s plot from the mid-1970s would suggest, the black market for gold will thrive when there are impediments that keep an Indian family from the yellow metal. But why is this?
The Indian proclivity for accumulating gold is born out of a desire to hedge against rapidly rising costs but also because of a serious distrust in other major financial instruments — such as equities or real estate. The government’s measures may well see a short-term impact but addressing the issue at its root will have to involve offering Indian households a wider, more viable, set of investment alternatives.
Firstly, along with focusing on curbing runaway retail inflation, the government must focus on offering a more robust suite of inflation-indexed financial instruments. This will attract those who are looking to hedge against costs. However, there are also more sophisticated options at the government’s disposal, which will involve strengthening the financial infrastructure around gold-linked securities such as ETFs.
In the current system, units of gold ETFs are backed by physical gold, which is bought and held by the mutual fund companies with their clients’ funds.
International exports
One idea would be to create a regulatory system that would allow mutual funds to lend this gold out, instead of just holding on to it. By lending it within the system, the mutual funds will benefit from earning an additional return on their asset and jewellers can use this supply to cut down on international imports, which are becoming more expensive as a result of government regulation.
This approach would ensure that the gold ETF market functions more productively, but still does not find a more productive use for the thousands of tonnes of gold that lie idle in homes and vaults.
Addressing that issue might be possible with a slightly bolder option — allowing the Reserve Bank to issue gold bonds. This system would allow households to take their physical gold and exchange it for certificates — not only will these be redeemable at any point but they will also be transferable, allowing holders to buy and sell these certificates at prevailing market rates.
It will also be cheaper for households, eliminating their explicit (vaults, bank lockers) and implicit (risk of fire, theft) holding costs. The Reserve Bank can then put these assets to work by lending it out to jewellers and earning a return while simultaneously curbing gold imports.
This latter system can be further strengthened to ensure participation by offering a carrot — gold bond buyers will receive a 3 per cent value premium over the amount of physical gold they turn in and, crucially, there will no questions asked on the origin of the gold. This, in effect, will allow a vast amount of black money that is held as gold to enter the legal financial system. Such a system is likely to not only generate a significant current account surplus, but also to dramatically strengthen the Indian rupee versus the dollar.
However, these options are not without their own set of concerns. Making gold-linked instruments more sophisticated and lucrative for everyone involved may usher in more, and larger, investors who would otherwise have not entered the asset class.
Would this drive up prices and volatility further? It’s a good question that merits study but I’d wager that it is also a risk that the government will have to take for longer-term stability.
http://gulfnews.com/

Middle East’s first Green mosque in Dubai under construction

Dubai: Construction work for the Middle East’s first eco-friendly mosque ‘Khalifa Al Tajer Mosque’ which is set for completion by March 2014, has made 25 per cent headway announced Awqaf and Minors Affairs Foundation (AMAF).
Located on a 105,000 square feet plot near the Clock Tower in Deira, the mosque’s beam foundation has been completed whereas pouring concrete has started for the main ceiling and the mosque’s minarets which are 23 metres high.
The pouring of concrete slab in the ablution block and 40 per cent of the mosque’s outer walls has also been completed, while the electrical transformer room is ready to be set by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA).
“Following the successful completion of this iconic initiative, AMAF aims to integrate green building standards into a large number of mosques in Dubai to make them eco-friendly and thereby contribute to Dubai’s long term sustainable development plans,” said Tayeb Al Rais, Secretary General of AMAF.

The mosque is set to feature the latest green technologies including solar panels and a roof garden for heat insulation, and will incorporate techniques for recycling and purifying worshippers’ ablution water for irrigation and washroom supply.
Taking shape over an area of 45,000 square feet, nearly 60,000 square feet of the development has been allocated for landscaping purposes. The Khalifa Al Tajer mosque will be considered Dubai’s largest place of worship with facilities that can accommodate more than 3,500 worshipers.

New accounts system to track how much Dubai spends on health

Dubai rolls out new accounts system that will help draft master plan to achieve the goalsNew accounts system to track how much Dubai spends on health
Dubai rolls out new accounts system that will help draft master plan to achieve the goals

The financial data – collected from health-care providers and insurance companies across the government, semi-government and private sectors, and residents - will help policy-makers understand the country’s health systems.
Dubai: The answer to how much does Dubai spend on health will be provided through the Health Accounts System of Dubai (HASD), which is being implemented by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) with immediate effect. 
The roll-out of the HASD was part of a workshop attended by more than 200 participants from the health-care sector on Monday.
The finacial data – collected from health-care providers and insurance companies across the government, semi-government and private sectors, and residents - will help policy-makers understand the country’s health systems.
The HASD will provide a systematic, consistent and complete overview of all relevant information on the health system with a focus on expenditure.
The information will also help develop national health and provide an international benchmark for comparison with other places of similar socio-economic background.The first Health Accounts System of Dubai report is expected by the end of the year.
Several countries like Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia have adopted the international System of Health Accounts (SHA), a global standard for producing health expenditure accounts, developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union).Through the Health Accounts System of Dubai, based on the WHO’s SHA, the emirate too joins this list.
The DHA has a core technical team in place to manage – collect, process and analyse - the financial data. The data received will be displayed at collective and aggregate levels.
During the workshop, senior officials from the DHA and the WHO spoke about the need for health expenditure information against factors like changing demographics, disease patterns, technological advances, and health-care activities in the emirate. They urged the Dubai health-care sector to cooperate with the necessary information.
Engineer Eisa Al Maidour, director-general of the DHA, stressed that from an expenditure perspective, the new accounts system is beneficial for both national and international levels to monitor as well as assess the health-care sector’s performance.
Speaking to Gulf News, Al Maidour said the timing of the launch of the Health Accounts System of Dubai is in line with the emirate’s long-term vision.
“At the DHA, we believe in a master plan to reach our goals and build on our achievements. We need data [health expenditure information] to ensure an evidence-based master plan. Through the data we can improve the health-care sector. Over the years, we can use the data to compare our progress both on a national as well as on an international level.”
About the HASD, Dr Haidar Al Yousuf, Director of Health Funding at the DHA, explained that the new system will look at all the sources of health-care spending and how efficiently an individual and the health-care sector spends on health care.
He told Gulf News, “It is an important tool for decision makers to prioritise utilisation of resources in the health-care sector. The whole cycle of spending is documented. Hence everyone who pays for health - from government to private sectors and pharmacies and insurance companies - has to submit information.”
Towards the implementation of the system, there are around seven dedicated members in the DHA core team, Dr Al Yousuf added.
Dr Cornelis Van Mosseveld, health economist with the World Health Organisation (WHO), told Gulf News that the system is indispensable for a country to track trends in health spending and formulate policies.
He said, “Collecting the data and using it at a policy level will certainly help improve and/or implement new health programmes. The WHO will provide as much support and technical assistance to help the Health Accounts System of Dubai (HASD).”
http://gulfnews.com/