Omar Al-Ubaydli is the Director of Research at the Bahrain Center for Strategic, International and Energy Studies, an affiliated associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and an affiliated senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. He previously served as a member of the Commonwealth of Virginia's Joint Advisory Board of Economists and a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He earned a BA in economics from the University of Cambridge, and an MA and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. In Bahrain, he has served as a member of the Higher Education Council Research Taskforce and the National Education Council Skills and Innovation Steering Committee. His primary research interests are political economy, behavioral/experimental economics, the economics of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and the economics of science. He has numerous peer-reviewed publications in international journals, and his research has been covered in mainstream media outlets, such as the Economist magazine and the Newsweek blog. He also regularly writes newspaper and magazine articles in outlets such as Al-Hayat newspaper and Newsweek ME.