Lelo Nxumalo

In these last few days before graduation I have found myself with some free time to reflect and read books I have been meaning to read. Two of those books are 13 Banker s by Simon Johnson & James Kwak, and  Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by former US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. I got the idea  from a course I took recently at the Harvard Law School: BGP 264: Capital Market Regulation taught by Professors Hal Scott and Robert Glauber . BGP 264 Is a primer in US capital market regulation and the course explores the evolution of regulation focusing on changes adopted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.  The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (or Dodd-Frank) was signed into federal law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. It was the US's response to the recession, and sought to–among other things– end the problem of institutions deemed too big to fail (TBTF). Below is a brief response to whether the Act succee...

My interest in macroeconomics predates my time at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It partly stems from a personal experience of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe as well a desire to understand global economic and financial developments in a coherent model. My graduate thesis is a study of the risks associated with euro bond issuance by commodity-dependent sub-Saharan African countries. The relevant framework for this is the Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA), which I summarize below. Written under the supervision of Professor Jeffrey Frankel–a preeminent macroeconomist who served in President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers–my thesis recommends issuance of commodity bonds as a mitigant to unsustainable debt. I have already blogged about my findings elsewhere, so I would like to use this post to reflect on some of the macro theories and models that I have learned. Here is an outline derived from one of my favorite courses at the Kennedy School– API-120: Advanced Open Econom...

Using Tableau to visualize data on life expectancy in Africa  

Order here . I am excited to present the ninth edition of the Africa Policy Journal.  I am grateful to those who helped make it a success. Bakary Seckan, the former Editor-in-Chief made the transition seamless. Timothy Cheston, Tomoo Okubu, and Sarah Glavey helped publicize the Journal to the greater Harvard community and recruit new editors at the 2013 Student Club Fair sponsored by the Kennedy School Student Government (KSSG). We worked closely with both KSSG and Student Services to publicize and finance our activities. I am particularly grateful to Joyce Hahn, APJ’s Managing Editor whose fundraising skills and management prowess made this edition a reality. I thank the following editors for their commitment to APJ throughout the year: Elizabeth Bennett, Aubrey Merpi, Ngozika Amalu, Kimberly Fernandes, Tim Cheston, Sarah Glavey, Tomoo Okubu, Ding Xu, and Bhekinkosi Sibanda. We launched our 2014 Call for Submissions on October 15 th 2013. We reached a diverse ...

The chart above uses data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, which is available up to 2012 to illustrate the relationship between demographics and income. The circles represent countries and a few have been labeled as shown. Fertility or births per woman tends to be highest in low income countries and lowest in more advanced economies. A woman in Mali or Niger can expect to have between 7 and 8 children. This number is much lower in more developed countries like South Korea and Norway, where a woman can expect to have between 1 and 2 children. The age dependency ratio is the proportion of the population that is younger than 15 or older than 64 looking to the working-age population (those ages 15-64) for support. The dependency ratio is tilted toward the young in countries like Niger and Mali, and toward the elderly in places like Japan and South Korea. It is over 100% in Niger and close to 50% in South Korea. It could therefore be said that South Korea is...

Ahead of the release of the 9th Volume of the Africa Policy Journal, the Harvard Kennedy School Admissions Blog highlighted our work in an email sent to current and prospective students. Read more here . Thank you to all our supporters. The 2014 print edition comes out mid-April. Pre-order yours today !!