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 »

On Nigeria’s GDP Rebasing – Plus Links I Find Interesting, Rebasing Edition

There really is nothing much to the rebasing/re-benchmarking exercise. That it has not been done in such a long period, hence making the updated figures sound so huge, says more about governance in Nigeria than anything else. And any serious Nigeria analyst or private sector player is not really surprised by the figures. The point… Read More »

Links I Find Interesting

1. Jay Z Has the Room – A Vanity Fair profile of Jay Z 2. ‘Ebony and Ivy,’ About How Slavery Helped Universities Grow  3. Why Scandinavian Prisons Are Superior 4. Now We Are Five – David Sedaris on his family and the death of his sister 5. Henry Gustave Molaison: The Basis for ‘Memento’ and the World’s Most… Read More »

The punishment of an open (Norwegian) prison

Now imagine yourself in a prison that commands a view from a tourist brochure. Your cell phone lies on a shelf, next to a TV and CD player, inside a prison that lets you go to paid work or study. There is no perimeter wall. Prison staff will help you with free-world social services to… Read More »

*Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not*

From The Economist: Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity… Read More »