By Isaac Groves / Times-News

ELON — Some Elon University MBA and law students will get a lesson in globalization and economic contrasts with a trip to the Cuba and the Cayman Islands.

“We get to see all the aspects of globalization,” said Kevin O’Mara,professor of management at Elon’s business school, “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

O’Mara and Art Cassill, Elon professor of accounting, will take 14 law and MBA students to the Caribbean countries to study their contrasts.

The Caymans, O’Mara said, practice a raw form of capitalism, with a huge international financial industry, next to no taxes and a large percentage of expatriates living and working there.

The financial industry in the Caymans gives the country of about 50,000 people a gross domestic product of about $44 per person. The GDP per person in the United States is about $43, O’Mara said, and about $15 per person for the rest of the Caribbean.

But keeping the industry means extremely low taxes. The government makes most of its money from fees imposed on expatriates living there.

This leaves the country with a weak infrastructure, poor education system and limited options to improve.

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