Category Archives: economics

A Short Reading List on Economic Informality

A couple of days ago on Twitter I promised to do a short reading list on economic informality. Here goes: The work that introduced the concept of informal economy:   Hart, K. (1973). Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 11(1), 61–89. See also, Leys, C. (1973). Interpreting African… Read More »

Friday links

1.Immigrant networks are a rare bright spark in the world economy. Rich countries should welcome them – The Economist 2. What’s your flavour? Italian or Spanish? – BBC Business Editor 3. Black France – Africa is a country 4. The dangerous cocktail of global money and local politics – Moisés Naím 5. On Nigeria’s Petroleum… Read More »

On the “informal economy”

From a WSJ review of Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy: Mr. Neuwirth introduces us to a woman named Jandira who for a decade has peddled coffee and homemade cakes to the unlicensed vendors at São Paulo’s early-morning wholesale market for pirated movies. Her street-corner business, she proudly tells him, has enabled… Read More »

David Graeber on #OWS

On naked capitalism: My first take on the question came when The Guardian asked me to write an oped on Occupy Wall Street a few days later. At the time I was inspired mainly by what Marisa Holmes, another brilliant organizer of the original occupation, had discovered in her work as a video documentarian, doing… Read More »

Nigeria’s CBN to shift about 10 percent of FX reserves from dollar to RMB

From Reuters: Nigeria’s central bank plans to diversify its $33 billion in foreign exchange reserves away from the dollar by switching a tenth of the stockpile into yuan, underlining the momentum behind China’s drive to internationalise its currency. “We are looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10 percent of our reserves,” central… Read More »

Senegal hunts for oil

From Bloomberg: Energy companies operating in Senegal will drill three offshore wells next year as the West African nation vies to join a growing group of regional crude producers, according to the state-owned oil company,Petrosen. Senegalese officials held talks with more than 10 oil companies this year in attempts to lure investors to its energy industry, said Joseph Medou, Petrosen’s geologist,… Read More »

Nigerian government’s not-so-detailed medium-term economic plan

From NEXT: Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said at her maiden media briefing yesterday in Abuja that though government was not discarding its blueprint for economic development captured under the Vision 20-2020 and the Transforming Nigeria document, government has identified some key sectors that must be addressed to create the enabling environment for growth. These… Read More »