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From The Editor's Desk (October 2012)Tony Addison UNU-WIDER is having a very active and successful autumn. Our climate change and development policy conference at the end of September...
Tony Addison UNU-WIDER is having a very active and successful autumn. Our climate change and development policy conference at the end of September...
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
Tony Addison As we come to the end of November, the snow has yet to arrive in Helsinki. We continue to enjoy clear skies and spectacular sunsets...
Policy coherence implies that donors in pursuing domestic policy objectives should avoid adversely affecting the development prospects of poor countries. To achieve policy coherence donors and multilateral institutions need to ensure security and...
GUESTAngle John Langmore and Perrin Wilkins When delivering the eighth WIDER Annual Lecture on rethinking growth strategies in 2004 Dani Rodrik...
Carl-Gustav Lindén The research project ReCom-Research and Communication on foreign aid, which is co-ordinated by UNU-WIDER with funding from the...
External development finance consists of those foreign sources of funds that promote or at least have the potential to promote development in the destination countries if delivered in the appropriate form. This rather broad definition qualifies all...
This Focus is devoted to small islands' development challenges, specifically relating to the achievement of economic growth, and draws on five papers arising from the UNU-WIDER 'Fragility and Development' research project meeting held in Fiji in...
This paper analyses three major problems of the current international monetary system: the asymmetric-adjustment problem, dependence on the monetary policy of the main reserve-issuing country, and the large demand for self-insurance by developing...
27 May 2013 Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School A growing governance agenda and post-2015 ambitions The governance agenda has grown rapidly in the...
Poor governance and lack of state capabilities in around 45 countries pose a threat to global security and development. The involvement of the international community is required to help these states break out of their low-development–high-conflict...
This policy brief is intended to outline suggestions and stimulate discussion at a time when the world community is thinking about, and is engaged in, a debate on global governance. The policy brief not only focuses on the reform of existing...
Peter Burnell The UN Doha Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development, held late in 2008, reminds us of how far foreign aid has...
Jurgen Brauer and Robert Haywood The role of the sovereign state in driving and resolving violent social conflict remains central to studies of peace...
George Mavrotas While recent years have witnessed new interest in the finance–growth nexus, the relationship between domestic resource mobilization...
As a result of the Five Year Review of the World Summit for Social Development, the UN General Assembly in September 2000 adopted a resolution calling for 'a rigorous analysis of the advantages, disadvantages and other implications of proposals for...
The paper assesses the multilateral development financing system in the light of the replenishments of three key funds in 2013. It argues that the replenishments showed strong continuing support for each institution, but identifies challenges...
The Study Group arrived at the following conclusions and recommendations: 1. Substantial surpluses on current account are likely to prevail for the next several years among many developed countries, and there is a need for their diversification...
Part of Book Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System
Part of Book Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System
The first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
The object of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the international trading system from its inception as GATT in 1947 to its latest incarnation as WTO, comprising the complex array of agreements forming its substance and mandate. The study...
Butcher shops and banks make an interesting contrast, as the late Cuban-American economist Carlos Diaz-Alejandro pointed out. Both may sell tainted...
by Oliver Morrissey I had the privilege of being interviewed by the Finnish TV news agency when I was in Helsinki for the World Institute for...
The paper attempts to examine the extent to which the ILO-supported projects have contributed to women’s economic empowerment and well-being i.e., from a gender perspective. The paper provides the ILO’s perspectives on gender dimensions of employment...
Just over a year ago, in March 2014, UNU-WIDER published a report entitled: What do we know about aid as we approach 2015? It notes the many successes...
Aid’s future, its history, and its impact were the topics of a policy workshop held by UNU-WIDER in co-operation with the Embassy of Denmark in Dar es...
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
Foreign aid can contribute to sustainable forestry in many ways. The goal is to secure forest benefits of the future, without compromising the needs of the present generations. This paper elaborates on forestry aid as it has evolved in the past...
After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly...
This paper primarily focuses on how global funding has supported interventions that have proven to be successful in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality around the world. The growth rate of development assistance targeted towards these...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid and Employment
Agriculture is a main contributor to pro-poor growth in Africa, but gender inequalities in the sector hold back agricultural growth and affect household welfare negatively. The sector has been characterized by a lack of gender-disaggregated data and...
Institution-building in Somalia has met with high levels of failure for two decades. But successes have occurred in other Somali-inhabited regions of the eastern Horn, and have been especially present at the local and municipal level. The most...
In this paper we update previous work that categorizes foreign aid projects in terms of their likely impact on the natural environment. We then document trends in the global distribution of environmental aid over time and show that environmental aid...
The World Bank is uniquely positioned to identify and disseminate innovative development practices. Based on his thirty-year experience as a World Bank staff member, the author takes an institutional perspective on the innovation climate at the World...
The failure of the Somali state from 1993 to 2012 represents one of the world’s most profound and prolonged cases of state collapse. Initially, education and other government services came to a standstill. With the halt of fighting in some areas...
Today it is widely acknowledged that increasing the gender sensitivity of development aid increases its effectiveness. This report evaluates the extent to which the World Bank integrates gender concerns into its policies and investments, pointing out...