Welcome
About
Abiola Oyebanjo is a doctoral researcher at the Humboldt University, Berlin and currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Effective Global Action, University of California, Berkeley . He was recently a Project Manager at the Data Science for Social Good Foundation, Carnegie Mellon University , USA. Abiola is the Executive Director of the Empowerment for Local People Foundation , an organization that uses tools in technology, media and data science to train and support small business owners in Nigeria. Abiola has previously worked on projects that promote governance, education equality, citizens engagement and social good - to marginalized citizens in Nigeria and in the US. Previous affiliations include the International Institute for Local Development , Bridge International Academies, Reboot , School of Public Affairs, American University DC.
Research Interest
My research interest are education inequalities, labour market inequalities, constraints to small firms, international migration and international development. My work is mainly inspired by the works of Ann Swinder, Pierre Bourdieu, Adepoju Aderanti, Thomas F. Pettigrew, David Card, Alan Krueger, Matthijs Kalmijn, Alejandro Portes, John H. Goldthorpe, George J. Borjas, David McKenzie, Chris Woodruff, Dean Karlan and Christopher Udry among others. These authors often examine the interwoven relationship between cultural orientation and return to human capital. My doctoral dissertation mainly discusses lower returns to education for educated returnees who signal “foreignness” when seeking their first jobs and the nature of the bifurcation existing within job roles . The general questions I aim to answer include (1) Are educated returnees able to apply foreign-earned skills and knowledge in their home country? (2) Can we estimate the effect of reintegration programs? (3) Do returnees have a different disposition based on their motivation for return or migration? (4) Does the nature of return migration change the skill composition of the home country (5) Can we further estimate the effect of other cultural capital used by returnees and whether it plays a role in their labour market integration? (6) what are the constraints to the growth of small firms in developing countries and how can we remove them?
Recent and ongoing papers
Old But Not Late: The Age-of-Arrival Effect on Wage gap of African Immigrants in the US.
What is the role of Pentecostalism on College-bound Anglophone Africans in OECD countries?
E-Bookkeeping: Measuring Small Firm Behaviour
CV
Download my CV here