Economics is ubiquitous, pervasive, and didactic. Baseball, nearly so. While the sport is a form of entertainment, and a religious experience to some, it can teach us a good bit about the economic process.

In the mid-20th century America had parallel baseball leagues, the white American and National leagues, and the Negro American and National leagues. From the end of the 19th century until 1947, baseball was segregated. No matter how excellent, black players couldn't realistically aspire to the "real" majors.

Then Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers hired Jackie Robinson to play infield. Robinson stoically endured vicious harassment and brought new excitement to the game with his daring playing style and aggressive base stealing.

His great success broke the barriers to entry. Other owners and managers immediately realized they were at a huge disadvantage if they maintained segregation. There were, after all, many excellent players in the Negro Leagues, e.g. Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Ray Brown, among dozens of others. The pool of untapped excellence was large.

As the old song goes: "Baseball teams make money you know"-but more so when they have winning seasons. Hence, there was a huge incentive to break down the wall that excluded black players.

Today, about 17 percent of major league players are black (vs. about 13 percent of the population at large). This is even higher in football and basketball. Economic, and moral, forces prevailed. Segregation in sports is a sorry historical artifact. This is the market process at work.

Turn now to the Arabic Muslim nations. They may or may not have baseball. Clearly, however, aside from oil sheiks, they are poor, largely illiterate, despotic, and doomed to failure.

Why? In large part because they, like major-league teams of old, have precluded participation by many of their citizens: women. Granted, not all Muslim countries are equally misogynistic. Indonesia and Pakistan have or had women prime ministers. Afghanistan, on the other hand, took a giant step backward under the Taliban.

When they lived nomadically or by herding goats, this mattered little. The 14th century didn't value symbolic manipulation. The 21st century does.

Today the differences between men and women have far less economic relevance. Women are just as intellectually capable as men. World Bank data show that Muslim countries that include women in government ministerial positions experience higher GDP growth than those that don't.

Nations that exclude women from education and the workforce cheat themselves of half their human capital. At a time when oil is declining as a source of revenue, and information and knowledge manipulation are increasingly important for economic growth, countries with few other natural resources suffer if they neglect their human resources.

In addition, restricting the activities of women reduces, if not eliminates, demand for the goods and services free women expect and enjoy: from office space and automobiles to sports and hairdressers. Whole markets-and the jobs they bring-are prohibited.

Thomas Friedman, in a New York Times editorial, had a telling anecdote regarding the effects of forbidding women to drive: "'I have a man who works for me who has three daughters,' said a Saudi businessman. 'He's constantly having to leave work to drive his daughters home from school or somewhere else. It affects productivity.'"

Imagine if David Duke were appointed "Sports Czar" and proceeded to ban minorities from professional sports leagues. Most major sports would languish or die.

Educating and integrating women creates more potential entrepreneurs to find creative, innovative ways to provide valued goods and services, discover and exploit profit opportunities, and generally drive economic growth.

Of course economic growth also requires an institutional structure that provides the security and incentives for people to take risks. This includes private property rights, the rule of law, and equal justice. On most of these fronts the Middle East is woefully lacking. They suffer accordingly-and deservedly so.

The future of the Muslim world depends on whether culture, religion, and tradition trump justice and economic incentives. Until they recognize the competitive value of women and unleash the potential of all their citizens, the countries of the Middle East will continue to stagnate. They, and we, will pay a high price. Branch Rickey understood the costs of discrimination. Will they?