Blog
Double dividends and mixed blessings: What would the pioneers of development economics make of new trends in developing economies?
Today, we see clear trends in developing countries of a potentially troubling ‘new normal’ for economic development. We see tertiarization with rising...
Working Paper
The Financial Deepening-Productivity Nexus in China
The financial intermediation-growth nexus is a widely studied topic in the literature of development economics. Deepening financial intermediation may promote economic growth by mobilizing more investments, and lifting returns to financial resources...
Blog
Why do we see boom-and-bust growth in fragile and conflict-affected states?
One of the most pressing challenges in development policy is to bring about rapid, sustained, and inclusive growth in developing countries. Apart from...
Working Paper
What Determines Foreign Aid to Papua New Guinea? An Inter-temporal Model of Aid Allocation
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...
Blog
Late development, early adoption – how new technology is reshaping the future of structural change
by
Lukas Schlogl
December 2020
Technological catch-up is bringing new asynchronies to development pathways. What does this mean for employment, globalization, and inequality? A...
Blog
The developer’s dilemma in India – the role of politics and economic ideology
by
Saon Ray, Sabyasachi Kar
December 2020
Policy makers seeking inclusive growth frequently face the developer’s dilemma between prioritizing structural transformation, which is potentially...
Blog
35 years of research for change – what's next?: Building just societies
To celebrate its 35th birthday, UNU-WIDER has looked back at some of its greatest achievements. As the year closes, Armida Alisjahbana, Kunal Sen...
Working Paper
Rights-based Approach to Development
In April 2001 the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) approached the Supreme Court of India arguing that the government has a duty to provide greater relief in the context of mass hunger. The litigation has now become the best known precedent...
Book
The Developer’s Dilemma
The developer’s dilemma is thus: developing countries seek inclusive economic development — i.e., structural transformation — sufficiently broad-based to raise the income of the poor. Inclusive economic growth requires falling income inequality to...
Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
This special issue presents new research on the state and its links to economic and social development. The special issue focuses on the processes of institutional transformation of the state, looking at how fiscal states arise in the developing...
Blog
Bringing in Public Economics – An Interview with Jukka Pirttilä
by
Carl-Gustav Lindén
March 2014
29 March 2014 Quite a few prominent Finnish economists have been collaborating with UNU-WIDER throughout the years. One of them is Jukka Pirttilä, who...
Blog
The Present Development Debate and Beyond
Finn Tarp The current global development agenda is centred on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), established at the turn of the Millennium. They...
Blog
Jobs Drive Development: An interview with Martin Rama
by
Carl-Gustav Lindén
January 2013
15 January 2013Martin Rama from The World bank discusses the process behind the World Development Report 2013 on jobs, which he directed.He emphasises...
Blog
A New Agenda for a New World
by
Gunilla Carlsson
June 2013
24 June 2013 Minister Gunilla Carlson Like every political agenda, the post-2015 agenda must be firmly based in a reality check. The current...
Blog
Microcredit and Poverty Alleviation: Can Microcredit Close the Deal?
by
M. G. Quibria
October 2012
M.G. Quibria In the wake of the worst famine of Bangladesh of the post-World War era Professor Muhammad Yunus launched a microcredit experiment in...
Blog
Millennium Development Goals in Turbulent Times: Emerging Challenges for Post-2015 MDGs
by
Rolph van der Hoeven, Peter van Bergeijk
June 2012
Rolph van der Hoeven and Peter van Bergeijk One of the most important trends that emerged since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)...
Blog
Redefining Poverty in China and India: What Does This Mean for the Fight Against Global Poverty? Part I
Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But...
Blog
Redefining Poverty in China and India: Making Growth more Inclusive, Part 2
Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But...
Blog
Reflecting Change: The Second Edition of ‘From Poverty to Power’
by
Duncan Green
November 2012
Duncan Green Updating a book on contemporary events can be unnerving. In the intervening years, events and new thinking combine to expose the...
Blog
Research Entering the Policy Domain
by
Carl-Gustav Lindén
September 2012
Carl-Gustav Lindén The research project ReCom-Research and Communication on foreign aid, which is co-ordinated by UNU-WIDER with funding from the...
Blog
Urbanization and Development in Asia: Linkages with Globalization and Migration
by
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen
June 2012
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen The Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, was the venue for the launch on 16 June 2012 of the just...
Blog
Africa's Failure to Industrialize: Bad Luck or Bad Policy?
by
John Page
December 2014
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not...
Blog
Africa’s Low Hanging Fruits
by
Justin Lin, Yan Wang
April 2014
23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer...
Journal Article
IMF and Economic Reform in Developing Countries
In this paper we assess the IMF approach to economic reform in developing countries. The impact of IMF program participation on economic growth has been evaluated empirically in a cross-country literature, with little evidence of IMF programs having...
Policy Brief
Enhancing Development through Policy Coherence
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...
Journal Article
Property Rights and Productivity
This paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in Vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife. Using a plot-fixed-effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title...
Journal Article
Weather Shocks and Cropland Decisions in Rural Mozambique
Economic development in low income settings is often associated with an expansion of higher-value agricultural activities. Since these activities often bring new risks, an understanding of cropland decisions and how these interact with shocks is...
Blog
What’s in a Name?: Human Rights, Human Development, and Human Dignity
by
David L. Richards
December 2012
David L. Richards Over the past decades, the terms ‘human rights’ and ‘human development’ have been characterized as being: complementary to one...
Blog
The Macroeconomic Management of Foreign Aid
by
Tony Addison, Tseday Jemaneh Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott,
Finn Tarp, Tuuli Paukkeri
January 2012
Tony Addison, Tseday Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott, Finn Tarp, Tuuli Ylinen To meet development objectives, aid recipients and their donor...
Research Brief
A colonial legacy?
The presence of European colonial powers in Africa has left a long-lasting legacy that has severely impacted their development trajectories. But what are the lingering effects of colonization on economic performance, in particular with regard to...
Blog
Interview with David Richards – How to Measure Human Development?
21 September 2012 The intricate dynamic between foreign aid to Africa, democratic transitions and consolidation is the topic of a series of research...
Working Paper
Development Questions for 25 Years
Recent growth experience in developing countries is reviewed, with an emphasis on structural change and sources of effective demand. How policy influences such outcomes is analyzed in light of historical experience. Options are discussed for macro...
Working Paper
Marketable Wealth in a Poor African Country
The study uses an asset index of consumer durables to track changes in household wealth in Ghana during the recent period of strong growth. Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey of 1998 that contains both wealth data and consumer durable data, the...
Working Paper
Gender Earnings Differentials and Regional Economic Development in Urban China, 1988-97
Gender earnings differentials in urban China by region and their changes during the first decade of economic reform are examined. It is found that the female–male earnings ratio increased during the early stage of reform. The male earnings premium...
Working Paper
Development in Chile 1990-2005
Chile, in the last 15 years, has shown remarkable results in terms of growth, poverty reduction and democratic governance. This paper reviews the structural changes that were behind these positive outcomes, as well as the pending challenges for Chile...
Working Paper
Development Strategies and Regional Income Disparities in China
This paper argues that the regional income gap of China is endogenously determined by its long-term economic development strategy. Development strategies can be broadly divided into two mutually exclusive groups: (i) the comparative advantage-defying...
Working Paper
Forces Shaping China's Interprovincial Inequality
This paper explores the forces that shaped China’s interprovincial inequality in the last five decades of communist rule. In so far as the change in interprovincial inequality is the result of differential growth in the provincial GDP per capita and...
Working Paper
What Kind of Education Does China Need?
This paper analyses the impact of different levels of educational attainment on local growth and economic disparities in China. By applying decomposition analysis and quantile regression techniques to a set of sub-provincial level regional data...
Working Paper
Income Inequality in China and its Influencing Factors
While the average level of income per capita has increased in China rapidly, income inequality is becoming a more serious problem that may threaten social stability and the sustainability of economic development. This paper examines the existence in...
Working Paper
Terms of Trade and Growth of Resource Economies
The current paper demonstrates a dichotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade, employing as case studies the two African countries, Botswana and Nigeria. Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of...
Working Paper
How Does Colonial Origin Matter for Economic Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa?
This paper investigates some of the existing hypotheses regarding the transmission of different colonial legacies to modern day economic growth. The fact that different colonial strategies were pursued by different colonizers in various territories...
Blog
Africa’s Poverty - Is Growth Delivering Enough?
To Stockholm, for Sida’s Development Talks on the theme ‘Africa rising? Poverty and growth in sub-Saharan Africa’. Finn Tarp and Andy McKay spoke...
Working Paper
Is Internal Migration Bad for Receiving Urban Centres?
During the twentieth century, internal migration and urbanization shaped Brazil’s economic and social landscape. Cities grew tremendously, while immigration participated in the rapid urbanization process and the redistribution of poverty between...
Working Paper
Globalization Crises, Trade, and Development in Vietnam
Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises—the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global...
Working Paper
Does Lack of Innovation and Absorptive Capacity Retard Economic Growth in Africa?
This paper reviews the innovative capabilities and absorptive capacities of African countries, and investigates whether they have played significant roles in the region’s slow and episodic economic growth. Results from cross-country regressions...