Ghosts aplenty in the UAE

We see lots of ghosts in the United Arab Emirates:

• Ghost marriages
• Ghost students
• Ghost firms

Ghosts can be good and bad. Good to the extent that they defeat adverse consequences of government policy - black markets due to price controls are an example. Bad because they are the result of a moral hazard that defeats the positive effect of government policy. But the moral hazard is created (unwittingly) by government and it fosters a culture of corruption.
More: fostering an ethic that you make money by taking money - rearranging who gets the money - and not by creating value.

In the examples given above, the ghosts are bad. (Perhaps the ghost students aren't - that depends on whether the government standards are educationally appropriate.)

Life has enough moral hazards; we don't need to create more. But governments around the world (unintentionally) are creating moral hazards. Here's a US example.

It's time for governments to wake up. It's time for Ghostbusters.