College of Economic & Management Sciences

Young researcher passionate about monetary economics

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Prof Temi Lydia Leshoro

Prof Temi Lydia Leshoro was recently awarded a Y2 National Research Foundation (NRF) rating. Expressing her sentiments on the rating, she says: "I am very excited about being rated as it has paved a way for more collaborations and research funding opportunities. I have been able to identify more research focus areas based on the feedback from the NRF reviewers pointing me in the right direction. I look forward to the journey."

Leshoro’s research focus areas are broadly macroeconomics and monetary economics. Although most of her publications are within the South African context, they are equally applicable to other developing countries.

The NRF Y-rating recognises young researchers who have held a doctorate or equivalent qualification for less than five years at the time of application, and who are recognised as having the potential to establish themselves as researchers within a five-year period after evaluation based on their performance and productivity as researchers during their doctoral studies and/or early postdoctoral careers. A Y2-rating in Leshoro’s instance identifies her as having the potential to establish herself as a researcher demonstrated by recent research outputs.

Leshoro’s research objectives closely follow her research focus area. Her ongoing research includes collaborative studies observing the asymmetric nature of the interest rate on private investment in South Africa as well as the interrelationship between population growth, youth unemployment and economic growth in South Africa. "Realising that many of my studies focus on the South African economy and as advised by the NRF reviewers," she says, "I am looking into studies that concentrate on Africa as a whole in order to observe how other economies behave, although I have one or two studies that observed other African countries such as Nigeria, Lesotho and Botswana. This will be an exciting area to research. I am collaborating with local and international scholars to impart knowledge while also gaining more experience."


Inspiration

Asked what inspires her in her line of research, Leshoro says: "I have a number of hard-working colleagues who are always doing research and always willing and ready to assist. I personally love to do research and I am more into collaboration now as one cannot work in isolation. I am very passionate about monetary economics as it encompasses our daily lives. In 2020, I published four articles with only one collaboration. This year so far I have been working on different studies with colleagues."

A variety of factors influenced Leshoro to choose this field of research. She explains that macroeconomics and monetary economics are broad focus areas that cannot be exhausted. "There is always something to write about, be it the effects of inflation and the repo rate on the economy, macroeconomic policies or the macro prudential regulations," she says. "Also, macroeconomic studies that include government spending, economic growth, unemployment and population growth are never-ending, and there is a lot to write about in these areas."

In addition to being able to extract three articles for publication in accredited journals from her PhD thesis, Leshoro’s research highlights and achievements include supervising four master’s students to completion. One of her greatest achievement, however, is the publication of ground-breaking research on inflation threshold. "I have also published more recent and topical studies," she concludes. "These include a couple of studies that investigated non-linearity and threshold in the relationship among variables. I find such to be quite interesting while moving away from the norm of observing linearity as economic relationships tend to be asymmetric."

* By Tshimagadzo Mphaphuli, Senior Journalist, Department of Institutional Advancement

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Publish date: 2021/06/07

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