Oluyomi Ola-David Insights

 As the saying goes, poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. In this post, I showcase rights of the poor which I crafted in 2020. I believe households, firms and governments can be more productive and inclusive if all economic units focus on these rights: ♡ Rights of the Poor ♡ Access to: 1. nutritious and cheap food. 2. warm and cheap clothes. 3. secure and cheap shelter. 4. quality and free education. 5. safe and clean water. 6. sanitation and litter-free environments. 7. fit and cheap shoes. 8. decent employment and just wages. 9. debt forgiveness. 10. collateral-free loans. 11. low-interest loans. 12. caring state leaders. 13. oppression-free environments. 14. cheap balanced diets. 15. free legal service. 16. timely relief in crisis. 17. tranquil streets and habitats. 18. enabling infrastructure. 19. social protection. 20. values and rights education. What are your thoughts on the rights of the poor?  Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section be

It’s just common sense! However, and unfortunately so, common sense is not common at all.   Look at the human race, it was created by cooperation not competition. No matter how much science has advanced, male and female cooperation is needed to produce a living embryo to be born as human.   Observe how lasting edifices are constructed, a lot of human cooperation delivers the masterpiece. From the skilled architect to the crude mason man, partnership is always required to build to last.   Take a peep into the world’s ecosystem; the animals that once competed to survive are now mostly extinct. For every human to remain alive and thrive they need to breathe out carbon dioxide and breathe in oxygen, while plants give out oxygen and take in carbon dioxide. We live as long as we share.   It is cooperation and partnerships that sustain plants and animals. Likewise, what started the human race is what will grow, develop and sustain it, cooperation and partnerships.   The ec

In this post, I spotlight the need to rethink and build resilient education systems. While the COVID-19 pandemic spread was new and intense, the personnel and physical infrastructure provided by formal institutions of learning for many preschoolers were locked down.   There was a shift to household personnel and infrastructure for learning; thus, emphasizing the role of parents and home-based caregivers in the education process.   Children of the poor, who tend to have limited access to internet for remoted learning, were left behind. Also, children of middle class parents, with remote work responsibilities, may have been sentenced to excessive daily screen time.   With the absence of home-based learning solutions for early childhood education, 'education for all' may remain elusive.   To build resilient education systems, we need to find answers to questions such as: ·        How can informal learning options such as structured homeschooling be encouraged dur

Research students, please get in here!   One frequently asked question by undergraduate and graduate students, during the concluding semesters of their course of study, is about what research project topic to select. For many such research students, the idea is just to do a research investigation in order to fulfil the partial requirements for obtaining a degree certificate, a necessary evil as they say. However, I think student investigations should be seen as a necessary good, because the outcomes of meaningful research may contribute to national policy as well as decision-making processes of individual economic agents. So, I would always advise that students seek out topics in their areas of interest.   Subject to research time and budget constraints, I think we can all carry out empirical studies on real world phenomena we truly care about. So doing, we can passionately and diligently carry on research that may general social impact. For the most part, many economics studen

 As we celebrate the 2020 #WorldFoodDay today, I am reminded of my yummy love of a variety of fruits as part of my daily diet. Fruits and fibre are essential to keep healthy and active from day-to-day.   The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends a daily intake of at least 400g of fruits and vegetables [equivalent to five (5) portions] as a preventive measure for non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The recommended basket of fruits and vegetables intake will ensure everyone meets their daily body needs for dietary fibre. Being a stickler for development, food security and the welfare of the urban and rural poor, I had begun to ask questions. For instance, can a typical Nigerian household afford 400g of fruits and vegetables for every member of the household? Some previous research shows that the staples diet in many Nigerian homes, as may be the case in several other African households, tends to the carbohydrate-heavy.   For children, age 0-5 years, who need balanced diets fo

The informal economy is where most of the income-poor and vulnerable can be found.  If you are concerned about development, then you realise you need to consider informal economy realities in the era of globalisation. Contemporary research will border on informal employment, informal work, informal finance, informal networks, as well as the impact of ICTs on the mode and nature of informal economy activities in developing country environments. Such studies use a combination of literature surveys, quantitative and qualitative research methods to present an analysis of the informal economy in global change and crisis. In my forthcoming piece, some of these issues are addressed. The introduction provides a conceptual background on informality and how the body of literature on informal economy has emerged since Hart’s coining of the term.   Set within our contemporary times, it also provides an overview of the effects of a shrinking global population, job losses on the informal economy a

I think the time-poor are the real poor. I have been a student of development economics for about a decade now. In these ten short years, I have come to realise that poverty goes beyond being deprived of income and basic necessities of life. Deprivation to me is merely a consequence of a state of real poverty, that is, time poverty. People who are time-poor ultimately have minimal resources with which to create a decent quality of life for themselves and those they love. They tend to have limited time to allocate to activities that could enhance their human capital, social capital, financial capital and ability to contribute to global community development.   The reality of poverty can be seen in the way people utilize their daily time resource. Even though every activity is important to the progress of every economic unit in the macro economy, some activities yield more market value than other activities. In any case, economic

I am sharing these thoughts towards promoting equity and inclusiveness in African household governance systems. I hope to carry out a full-fledged research on it soon enough, during a fellowship. Here goes... Considerable efforts of rules-based international order and associated organisations focus on enhancing the performance of developing country governments and their governance structures on eight (8) fundamental parameters of good governance: rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, accountability and participation. In effect, several African governments seek to perform better on each of these metrics in order to improve their international outlook, attractiveness to foreign aid and investments as well as garner institutional support for inclusive growth and sustainable development initiatives (Brookings, 2019).  Furthermore, the collective action of global governance institutions towards the promotion

I provided a perspective, in response to the question 'what are the chief opportunities and challenges facing leaders today', in a recent fellowship application. Sharing my thoughts on the leadership realities in a globalized world was exciting. Here goes... Leaders in all fields of endeavour and spheres of influence in today’s globalized world face new and emerging challenges due to the pace and pattern of social, economic, and technological change. Therefore, emerging leaders need to learn how to lead in such challenging economic, political and social climate.  Even though globalization and the shrinking global space presents myriad challenges, it also presents personal growth opportunities for leaders as they adapt to the pace of change. For instance, in response to the speed of change, emerging leaders keep learning to understand changing demographics, new technologies as well as policies advanced by global governance institutions. Increased competition, complexity of globa

Desperate people do desperate things. Early on in my academic journey,  I was pretty desperate to produce an output. During such an instance, there was conference on innovation coming up at UNU-MERIT. I needed to be obedient and not to rest on my hoars as a young academic. I had an idea of a paper that could fly. If my memory serves me right,  titled the paper, 'the employment effects of process and product innovation in Nigeria.' I strove and I strove and I wrote and wrote. There were some papers based on other climes that I could glean thoughts from too. I got as much useful material that I could get, did preliminary analysis and sent it off. Ultimately, the paper came back rejected for the conference.  As I went further down the academic road, I realised that paper was not original in the least. If I know what I know now I should have done a plagiarism test before sending it out. But I was very grateful I was not accepted for that conference. In the spirit of transformation,

Amongst several determinants of economic growth and development, capital plays a critical role. We can identify two broad types of capital important to any economy – physical capital and human capital. Physical capital comprises of buildings, machines, technical equipment and stock of raw materials; all of which are used in the production of goods and services. Alternatively, human capital is a term used to represent the collection of people’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and a gamut of productive attitudes. It is beneficial to the production process and valuable to those who own it. While it is important to acknowledge that all forms of capital have balancing roles, the importance of human capital over physical capital is especially worthy of note. One of the ways by which economists have emphasised the importance of human capital over physical capital is by comparing the distribution of income among those who own physical capital vis-à-vis those who own human capital. Just as

Economists are keenly interested in how income is distributed among the population. Why? It is only fair to be concerned about inequality because, the number of poor persons in country and the average quality of life depends on the equal or unequal distribution of income. Also, though high levels of inequality may lead to growth as some stages of development (see Kuznet’s hypothesis), high inequality tends to be tricky for the economy at other times. What then is inequality? Whenever there exists a disproportionate distribution of total national income among households, there is inequality. In most cases, the share of income attributed to the rich in a typical country is far greater than the share attributed to poor segments of the population. Needless to say that inequality of income is observable in every country of the world, developed and developing countries alike. However, the extent of inequality differs from country to country. For the most part, higher observable ine