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Blog
Walking the road to the Fourth Financing for Development Conference and beyondLast week, we attended the 2025 UNDP Dialogue on Public Finance and SDGs, where we explored the most pressing topics regarding public financing for...
Working Paper
Inequality and agricultural structural changeSince 1950, agricultural productivity has been increasing even as labourers leave agriculture. However, while average productivity of the sector has been converging, within-sector inequality has been increasing. Agricultural income inequality is...
Blog
In their own words: A personnel exchange between African tax data labs is a small but important example of the value of cooperationIn recent years, UNU-WIDER has partnered with sub-Saharan African governments to establish secure data labs that provide researchers with access to...
Working Paper
Weathering challengesMozambique is highly vulnerable to climate change. It faces frequent cyclones, floods, and droughts while having limited revenue collection capacity and social protection programmes. This paper assesses the distributional effects of climate shocks on...
Journal Article
Encouraging micro-enterprises to prepare for disastersWorldwide, enterprises are affected by disasters such as cyclones and floods. Despite these negative impacts, many do not prepare for future disasters. Research on pro-environmental behavior suggests that changing the factors influencing people’s...
Blog
Celebrating 40 Years of UNU-WIDER
In 2025, UNU-WIDER completes four decades of work. Starting as a small think-tank in relatively remote Helsinki, it has grown into a global institute...
Working Paper
Distribution in late developmentThis paper proposes a novel assessment of the Kuznets curve for an underdeveloped country engaging in rapid late development. We mobilize new long-run data for Brazil, combining surveys, administrative records, and national accounts statistics, to...
Working Paper
Rule of law in MozambiqueThis paper examines the state and evolution of the rule of law in Mozambique, focusing on key dimensions such as voice and political participation, judicial independence and accessibility, corruption, access to basic services, personal security, and...
Journal Article
Natural resource revenues and double taxation treaties in developing countries: insights from a network centrality approachThis paper investigates the impact of double taxation treaties (DTTs) on resource revenue mobilization in 91 resource-rich countries from 2000 to 2019. We calculate annual degree centrality indices to measure countries’ integration into the tax...
Working Paper
Raindrop in the drought? Vulnerability to climate shocks and the role of social protection in ZambiaZambia’s reliance on rain-fed agriculture makes its economy and population highly vulnerable to frequent droughts and irregular rainfall. This paper assesses the role of social protection, specifically the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) program, in...
Working Paper
Social protection in humanitarian contexts: exploring stakeholder views from TanzaniaThis working paper examines Tanzania’s social protection system amidst growing humanitarian crises driven by climate change, health epidemics, and regional conflicts. It explores the social protection needs experienced in humanitarian settings, the...
Working Paper
Jobs, investments, and exporting: the real effects of electricity crises in South AfricaSouth Africa’s grid remains unstable and characterized by frequent power cuts. Employing a generalized difference-in-difference approach, this paper examines the implications of South Africa’s electricity crises on jobs, capital investment, and...
Working Paper
The gendered effects of climate shocks on labour and welfare in ZambiaThis paper exploits several waves of two major nationwide representative surveys to document the impacts of climate shocks on individuals and households in Zambia. We merge these datasets with historical precipitation and temperature data at the...
Journal Article
Clientelist politics and development – EditorialPart of Journal Special Issue Clientelist Politics and Development
Blog
2025 – No time to waste on debt and development
An increasing number of Global South countries are now diverting growth and development spending to pay off insurmountable levels of external debts...
Working Paper
Carbon pricing and taxationNowadays, all policy makers must engage with direct and indirect carbon pricing issues. However, the implications of different types of tools and methods to price carbon and support decarbonization deserve further attention in view of their...
Working Paper
Work permits for refugees as social protection during polycrisesThis paper studies the social protection of refugees during a pandemic. A pandemic adds to the many existing challenges refugees face, creating a dangerous polycrisis. Drawing on detailed household-level data collected by the United Nations High...
Blog
Is the Paris Agreement dead? Report back from COP29 in Baku
COP29, which just concluded, gathered country delegations, observers, businesses, and NGOs for several rounds of heated negotiations and discussions...
Technical Note
Toolkit for the estimation of tax gaps using a bottom-up approachThis technical note relates to the tax gap toolkit, which includes code (Stata do files) and a README file (how to run the code). The note describes the literature and methodology behind the development of the toolkit. The tax gap toolkit is related...