Margarita Peredaryenko

Margarita Peredaryenko is an Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia and the author of several publications, including “Calibrating the human instrument: Understanding the interviewing experience of novice qualitative researchers” and “Gold Dinar as a Consumer Product: Modified Version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour”.

Dr. Peredaryenko comes with back to back high distinction qualifications in Doctorate in Business Administration and Master of Business Administration from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). Her undergraduate is a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), Russia.

In a recent article, she mentioned that we need a people-centric economic and governing societal model and practices at scale to fight inflation: "Economists will typically tell you that inflation results from an increase in production costs or an increase in demand for products and services. Therefore, consumer prices would rise steeply the more a country is exposed to supply chain shocks. This appears to be true for most countries, but not all. For example, Japan appears to be an outlier, with an inflation rate of about 2.5 per cent when its Group of Seven (G7) peers are experiencing around 8 to 9 per cent of inflation. What makes Japan different appears to be its people-centric culture, exhibited in consumer behaviour and businesses that respect it. This demonstration of the human element in inflation is not often discussed, even though it highlights how the people have such profound power (therefore, impact) on the economy. It is easier for businesses and regulators to blame market forces or “supply and demand” and point to economic theories and mathematical equations to explain inflation. Accordingly, some may believe that inflation can only be addressed solely through market forces, monetary policies by regulators, or government interventions. For example, Malaysia appears to be experiencing very low levels of inflation, putting Malaysia’s inflation rate alongside exemplary advanced economies such as Japan and Switzerland, due to government intervention such as subsidies and other policies or measures. Although this reduces the impact of inflation, it does not reduce real inflation caused by an actual increase in production costs or prices. Even when subsidies target input prices, this merely “masks” or “discounts” the costs. The intervention does not actually bring down production costs—unlike what actual efficiencies in production would be able to do. Needless to say, this isn’t sustainable."