Professor Niaz Asadullah

Social Policies

Professor Niaz Asadullah is an Oxford-trained development economist specializing in South/East Asia. He currently holds visiting positions at the University of Reading (UK), Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), and North South University (Bangladesh). Previously he has served as a professor at the University of Malay and Monash Malaysia. Among his active affiliations, he is the Southeast Asia Lead of the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and Research Fellow at IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Germany.

As a Senior Fellow at IDEAS, Professor Niaz is leading research on the role of TVET in addressing youth unemployment with special reference to Malaysia's agricultural sector. His other ongoing research on Malaysia covers poverty and regional inequalities in living standards, governance of foreign workers, women's labor market participation, demand for and supply of childcare, quality of public schools, and mental health among adolescents.

Among his other academic responsibilities, Professor Niaz is an Associate Editor of several WoS/SSCI journals: Singapore Economic Review (World Scientific), Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (Taylor & Francis) and International Journal of Educational Development (Elsevier) and Co-Editor of the Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (Springer Nature). He is also on the editorial advisory board of Feminist Economics (Taylor & Francis), Poverty and Public Policy (Willey), Journal of Public Affairs (Willey), COMPARE: A Journal of Comparative and International Education (Taylor & Francis), Journal of Demography (Thailand) and Malaysian Journal of Economics (UKM).

His research has been supported by the Social Security Research Centre (SSRC) and HIR schemes of the University of Malaya, the Australian Development Research Award Scheme, Leverhulme Trust (UK), International Growth Centre (IGC), the DFID (UK), Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), South Asian Network of Economic Research Institutes, Global Education Commission, and the World Bank. He has also consulted for Asian Productivity Organization (APO), BRAC, Oxford Policy Management, BAPPENAS (Government of Indonesia), UN-ESCAP, UNESCO, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO).

He has published 60+ WoS/SSCI articles and 200+ media articles (opinion pieces) in newspapers/magazines including the Project Syndicate, the Conversation, World Economic Forum, the Diplomat, the East Asia Forum, D+C Development & Cooperation, and World Education Forum (UNESCO). He has appeared on interviews with Al-jazeera, ABC Australia, Astro Awani TV (Malaysia), BBC World Service, Business FM Malaysia, the Economist, the Star (Malaysia) & the Edge Financial Daily.

His prominent (past) policy appointments include serving two terms as a permanent member of the National Agricultural Advisory Council (MPPN) under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MAFI), Government of Malaysia, and as a member of the Advisory Council on Behavioral Insights (BI) at the Malaysian Productivity Corporation (MPC), Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry.