Responsible governance needs to address the interest and concerns of consumers by protecting them from market abuses. The protection is made through various regulatory frameworks and institutional establishments peculiar to the specific situation of each country and market situation. The right of consumers has long been recognized by the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection and member of countries are encouraged and advised to have their own domestic law to regulate consumer rights. Accordingly many countries work to regulate the right of their consumers through various legal and institutional arrangements. The international organization named Consumer International has also been the focal international organization to promote consumer’s rights and the protection to be accorded.

Economists concern themselves not only with addressing difficult questions thoughtfully, but also with formulating the questions themselves. Sometimes, rethinking those questions can hold the key to finding the answers we need.

The word “openness” has two related but distinct connotations. It can mean that something is unrestricted, accessible, and possibly vulnerable; or it can mean that something, such as a person or institution, is transparent, as opposed to secretive.

The desire to make a difference is born of a fundamental belief in something greater than ourselves, and by the concern that we all have for the wellbeing of our fellow humans.
As an Arab woman, I find it impossible to sit back and watch – or worse, turn away – as parts of the Middle East suffer through such a difficult time in the region’s already troubled history. Millions of innocent people have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are being driven across national borders into an uncertain and unstable future. Their need for help is clear.

Although still a majority rural country, Ethiopia has been rapidly urbanizing in the past few decades. The urban centres have increased both in size and number. In the 1960s there were about 384 towns with a total population of 1.5 million, which increased to 925 in 1994 with the urban population of 8.5 million. Currently, the urban population has more than doubled reaching at 19 million. Over the past 30 years, Ethiopia’s annual urban population growth rate has been higher than the average in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report released by the World Bank Group in 2015.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation with nearly 100 million people, is the fastest growing nation in the world outpacing even China and India in most recent years. With an estimated GDP of USD76.9 billion in 2017, Ethiopia is currently Sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest economy after Nigeria and South Africa. Its second Growth and Transformation Plan (2016-2020) anticipates that industry will grow at an average of over 20Pct while agriculture and services continue to witness impressive growth.

Family-owned firms are the backbone of the world’s economies, but only a third survive to the second generation. In much of the world, family and firms are perhaps the two most important institutions, and these are often intertwined. The creation, growth and longevity of family businesses are critical to the success of the global economy. Indeed the majority of businesses in the world are family controlled – and these range from unsung, modestly-sized firms to commercial giants such as Ford, Samsung and Hyundai.

In 2015, the 62 richest people in the world held as much wealth as the 3.6 billion poorest and most vulnerable. In 2016, a mere eight people did, and they were all men.
As Oxfam International’s Executive Director, I am not pointing this out to be bombastic; rather, new data on global inequality reveal that the world’s poorer half has less wealth than we previously thought. When we apply the more detailed figures that we had this year to last year’s estimate, we find that nine men, not 62 men and women, held as much wealth as the bottom 3.6 billion in 2015.

Immediately after World War II ended, a new phrase entered the economic lexicon: “dollar shortage.” European economies were coping with extensive war-related damage and a broad array of impediments to their efforts to rebuild their industrial base. At the time, the United States was the only provider of capital equipment for reconstruction. So, without access to US dollars, Europe’s economies could not obtain the inputs needed to increase their exports.

I recently heard former World Trade Organisation Director-General Pascal Lamy paraphrasing a classic Buddhist proverb, wherein China’s Sixth Buddhist Patriarch Huineng tells the nun Wu Jincang: “When the philosopher points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger.” Lamy added that, “Market capitalism is the moon. Globalisation is the finger.”