China’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-region income inequality in China. This paper discusses China...
The present study examines the degree to which income distribution affects the ability of economic growth to reduce poverty, based on 1990s data for a sample of rural and urban sectors of African economies. Using the basic needs approach, an analysis...
This paper examines to what extent the central bank for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (BCEAO) has used interest rate policy in response to domestic economic developments. We show that while in the long run the BCEAO matches changes in...
Nutritional status at a young age is positively associated with an individual’s total human capital accumulated. Higher levels of human capital are in turn strongly correlated with an individual’s economic and social well-being. Health is one such...
Part of Book External Finance for Private Sector Development
The goal of this paper is to evaluate the results of regional economic growth model estimations at multiple spatial scales using spatial panel data models. The spatial scales examined are minimum comparable areas, microregions, mesoregions and states...
Luc Christiaensen and Lionel Demery Escalating food prices in 2007-2008, climate change and land grabbing have woken the world up to the extraordinary...
Part of Journal Special Issue Economics of climate change impacts on developing countries
Commodity price fluctuations have been troublesome in their destabilising effects on the foreign exchange earnings of developing countries. Recently, however, attention has been drawn to their role in transmitting inflation and in inducing...
This paper relates Amartya Sen’s capability approach to the literature on equivalence scales. Synthetic indicators of well-being are constructed by adjusting individual incomes for differences in functionings. An exploratory comparative application...
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...
Book review on: T. Besley and T. Persson (2011). Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters.Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson embark on a new research agenda in their book ‘Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics...
The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of the recent development in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates, the matching function for...
This study econometrically evaluates the short-run impact of aid in small developing countries (SDCs) by applying a VAR model to study aid's impact on 'absorption' (increasing import demand) and 'spending' (increased domestic demand) across countries...
Bilateral trade of geographically distant countries is likely to be negatively affected by the distance separating them from their trading partners and positively affected by their remoteness, defined as the average weighted distance between two...
Aid is an important resource for developing countries. Many small island states (including those in the Pacific) are highly reliant on aid to supplement meagre government resources and other foreign capital inflows. This paper investigates the...
Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Development aid aimed at increasing productivity in the fisheries sector has at times had a negative effect by encouraging or facilitating overfishing. A percentage increase in capacity enhancing or bad subsidies in sub-Sahara Africa, all else being...
In a recent UNU-WIDER working paper 'Fiscal composition and aid effectiveness: A political-economy model' Paul Mosley examines the claim that aid would have, in the long term, a negative impact on productivity and stability of expenditure in...
This paper introduces a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal bivariate categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid, Social Policy and Development
The fisheries sector in sub-Saharan Africa has benefited from high and increasing amounts of foreign aid for over four decades. In the 1990s when evidence emerged that most stocks were overcapitalized and overfished, the effectiveness of fisheries...
One of the dual objectives of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is to promote sustainable development in the host countries. With different CDM indicators for 58 CDM host countries over 2005-10, this paper empirically...
This paper confronts three conundrums. First, does the relationship between aid and growth fade over time when aid is successful? Second, why are aid inflows neglected in the literature on growth acceleration (or episodes). Third, why is country...
In accounting for the rather gloomy trend of the aid effectiveness literature over the last few years, one explanatory strand has been fiscal, suggesting in particular that aid flows in weak states have tended to erode the tax base and the structure...
Part of Book Utility Privatization and Regulation
The question of whether aid is effective in promoting economic growth is a complex and controversial one. While there is a general consensus around the idea that aid can have positive effects at the micro and meso levels, recent studies, such as...
Part of Journal Special Issue Inequality and Multidimensional Well-being
Part of Journal Special Issue Policy Arena: Small Island Developing States
The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro- and meso-levels, recent literature doubts the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses the aid-growth literature...
The micro-macro paradox has been revived. Despite broadly positive evaluations at the micro and meso-levels, recent literature doubts the ability of foreign aid to foster economic growth and development. This paper assesses the aid-growth literature...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fragility and Development in Small Island Developing States
The concept of scapegoating is frequently used to explain how opportunistic elites attempt to deflect blame onto vulnerable ethnic minorities, particularly during times of social turmoil. However, the notion of scapegoating is undertheorized in the...
What explains the divergent political paths that the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have followed since the fall of the Berlin Wall? While some appear today to be consolidated democracies, others have all the...
One of the most visible and enduring manifestations of urban poverty in developing countries is the formation and proliferation of slums. While attention has focused on the rapid pace of urbanization as the sole or major factor explaining the...
This paper studies the determinants of the inefficient functioning of the Tunisian labour market. The study takes advantage of recent developments in the stochastic frontier techniques and estimates the matching function for Tunisia using...
This paper analyses the relationship between income inequality and growth in transition economies. The distinct and complex dynamics adherent to these economies lead to the proposition of new econometric models in the paper. However, empirical...
Unlike existing studies, we adopt a multi-sectoral approach and consider the full range of climate projections. Biophysical damages are translated into economic costs using a dynamic economywide model. Our results for Vietnam indicate that the...
In the 1980s most of Sub-Saharan African countries (SSA) especially the HIPCs faced an unprecedented indebtedness. Different mechanisms of debt relief as well as economic reforms have been put in place with the objective of enabling these countries...
Part of Book Understanding Small-Island Developing States
Part of Book Macroeconomic Policy in the Franc Zone
Part of Book Understanding Inequality and Poverty in China
Part of Journal Special Issue The CFA Franc Zone 10 Years After Devaluation
This paper models the inter‐temporal allocation of foreign development aid to Papua New Guinea (PNG). A formal theoretical model of aid allocation is developed, in which aid to any one country is determined jointly with aid to all other recipient...
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