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Bringing in Public Economics – An Interview with Jukka Pirttilä29 March 2014 Quite a few prominent Finnish economists have been collaborating with UNU-WIDER throughout the years. One of them is Jukka Pirttilä, who...
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...
Finn Tarp The current global development agenda is centred on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), established at the turn of the Millennium. They...
15 January 2013Martin Rama from The World bank discusses the process behind the World Development Report 2013 on jobs, which he directed.He emphasises...
24 June 2013 Minister Gunilla Carlson Like every political agenda, the post-2015 agenda must be firmly based in a reality check. The current...
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...
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)...
Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But...
Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But...
Duncan Green Updating a book on contemporary events can be unnerving. In the intervening years, events and new thinking combine to expose the...
Carl-Gustav Lindén The research project ReCom-Research and Communication on foreign aid, which is co-ordinated by UNU-WIDER with funding from the...
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen The Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, was the venue for the launch on 16 June 2012 of the just...
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
David L. Richards Over the past decades, the terms ‘human rights’ and ‘human development’ have been characterized as being: complementary to one...
Tony Addison, Tseday Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott, Finn Tarp, Tuuli Ylinen To meet development objectives, aid recipients and their donor...
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...
21 September 2012 The intricate dynamic between foreign aid to Africa, democratic transitions and consolidation is the topic of a series of research...
Danielle Resnick and James Thurlow The concept of ‘green growth’ is one which has understandable political currency, highlighted by its prominence in...
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 I started writing this ‘From the Editor’s Desk’ in Accra, to the sound of an African drum band, preparing for a ceremony to mark the...
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
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 With this issue, Angle returns refreshed from its Nordic summer break. The sun continues to shine on the Baltic, although it is getting...
Tony Addison With our temperatures now well above zero, we head for the official end of the Finnish winter on 1st May (the ‘Vappu’ holiday). As...
James Thurlow UNU-WIDER recently hosted an international conference on ‘Climate Change and Development Policy’. We were motivated by the apparent...
Yongfu Huang The climate change crisis and development needs of the world's poor require us to acknowledge the necessity and urgency for both...
Andrés Solimano Chile underwent a free market revolution initiated by the Pinochet regime in the 1970s and 1980s. A very similar model, with some...
Lucy Scott and Annett Victorero The ReCom—Research and Communication on Foreign Aid programme held its first results meeting on the topic of ‘Aid...
Tony Addison A visit to Buenos Aires in September provided a good vantage point to look at the euro zone’s deepening crisis. Angle readers will recall...
Milla Nyyssölä Behavioural economics, an approach combining the insights of psychology and economics, is coming to the fore in development economics...
Tony Addison With six months remaining till the end of 2011, it’s time to take a peek into the near future. What can we expect? John Kenneth Galbraith...
Lucy Scott Bangladesh has made some remarkable strides in development and poverty reduction since independence. Yet the country is in many ways a...
Tony Addison As autumn moves into winter in Helsinki, it is time to bring you the October edition of UNU-WIDER’s newsletter, WIDER Angle. Regular...
Tony Addison With the end of the year fast approaching, we bring you the last Angle of 2011. Here in Helsinki, the shortest day of the year is nearly...
Robert J. Strom Interest in the study of entrepreneurship has flourished among scholars in recent years. This research has brought to light, among...
Markus Jäntti and Juhana Vartiainen Finland is an example of a late but successful state-led industrialization that was carried out rapidly. The...
Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Guanghua Wan China and India have become global economic powers. Even at the market exchange rate, China overtook Japan...
Wim Naudé, Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Mark McGillivray The global economic crisis, which erupted about one year ago with the US sub-prime mortgage...
This article presents an overview of the current special issue ‘Institutions and African Economies’. The findings include: (1) greater prevalence of democratic regimes improved both agricultural productivity and the overall growth of African...
The project centers on the inter-linkages between the major developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China's growth on smaller economies and the rest of the...
Wim Naudé, Mark McGillivray and Amelia U. Santos-Paulino A vital part of WIDER's research agenda has in recent years focused on the challenges faced...
Following on WIDER's work on Development Finance which has involved three projects since 2002, a development conference on 'Aid: Principles, Policies and Performance' was organized in June 2006. Aid is one of the most challenging development issues...
The ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid – programme produced 247 original studies. More than 300 researchers from 59 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred...
Ghana is relatively rare among Sub-Saharan African countries in having had sustained positive growth every year since the mid-1980s. This paper analyses the nature of the growth and then presents an analysis of the evolution of both consumption...
After many years of relatively slow growth, Tanzania’s national accounts data report accelerated aggregate growth since around 2000. Our analysis shows that there has been somewhat slower growth in private consumption and in sectors such as...
The paper explores the paths towards building institutional foundations for inclusive development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Viewing institutional configurations as a system of multiple equilibria, the concepts of endogenous institutions and...
This paper discusses the recent history of education aid policy. It highlights an important shift in policy thinking in the international aid architecture that has dominated the global education aid agenda since the early 1990s. It argues that...
This study represents the first attempt at an integrated approach to assessing the potential impacts of climate change on the national economy of South Africa via a number of (but not necessarily all) impact channels. The study focuses on outcomes by...
Since 1994, a great deal has been accomplished. We argue that poverty reduction was temporarily sidelined in the 2000s. A series of shocks, especially the fuel and food price crisis of 2008, combined with poor productivity growth in agriculture and a...
This paper reviews the current problems of national accounting in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the current uneven application of methods and availability of data, any ranking of countries according to gross domestic product levels is misleading. It is...
Part of Book Achieving Development Success
In a recent article in the International Journal of Educational Development we present the results of a systematic review conducted to identify policy...
We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality: (1)...
In this paper I empirically investigate the early international entrepreneurship of indigenous Chinese firms using data on 3,948 firms surveyed by the World Bank in 2002-03. I find important differences in the extent and motivation of early...
Although development generally refers to a broad concept, the quest for development in Sub-Saharan Africa has been biased by ideological considerations which made abstraction of local conditions and people’s aspirations. The prevalent development...
Tanzania’s industrial sector has evolved through various stages since independence in 1961, from nascent and undiversified to state-led import substitution industrialization, and subsequently to de-industrialization under the structural adjustment...
This paper addresses the issue of poor data on Mozambican manufacturing firms. A new dataset (the merged manufacturing database) is merged from provincial industrial databases from each of Mozambique’s 11 provinces. The new dataset is assessed by...
One feature of exporting firms in Cambodia is that they are not of domestic origin but are foreign firms that export from the moment they are established in Cambodia. In this paper we examine the extent to which the presence of foreign-owned export...
Africa’s improved growth performance over the last 15 years provides an opportunity for the continent to transit from recovery to structural transformation. This paper reviews the evolution of development theory and practice, the role of agriculture...
Countries need capacity for a variety of reasons, including sustaining economic growth, generating jobs, reducing poverty, effectively managing development programmes, and transforming societies and economies. A lot of effort has been expended to...
The distinct features of inclusive growth within the context of sub-Saharan Africa are identified. The anatomy of growth is analysed by exploring the interrelationship among growth, inequality, and poverty. The present growth spell appears to have...
To continue its economic growth and create new and better livelihoods, Africa must transform the productive side of its economy. Ongoing globalization—in trade, finance, and technology—opens up new possibilities for structural transformation, but...
Wim Naudé Following the US subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008, the world is now staggering from financial to economic crisis as many high-income...
William Lazonick Defined as the act of forming a new business, entrepreneurship is viewed as a prime way in which individualism can contribute to...
Recent years have seen a surge of research into the causes of conflict together with its development effects, as well as the design of peace initiatives, peace-keeping and programmes of reconstruction, reconciliation and democratization in ‘post...
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for the UN system as well as the wider donor community. National authorities and their donor partners are faced with multiple priorities - rebuilding infrastructure...
What types of businesses benefit or suffer due to geographic clustering? Data available from Cambodia on competition and spillovers—at both village- and commune-level—is useful to answer a number of questions about the effects of clustering and the...
The majority of income inequality occurs at the tails of the income distribution The Gini coefficient does not provide a representative measure of income inequality When the top 10% of income earners expand their share of national income it often...
In academic discourse, it has become almost ritualistic to begin a piece on foreign aid by highlighting the sharp controversies over its effectiveness...
Summary measures of human well-being are increasingly used to compare and monitor performance within and across countries. The UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI) is one of a number of measures which have done much to refocus attention on the...
As one of globalisation's most visible dimensions, foreign direct investment (FDI) is central to the prospects for developing countries in the world economy. Key issues include the direction of causation between FDI and growth, the potential role of...
This Policy Arena examines some of the development challenges faced by SIDS. It brings together a collection of papers arising from the UNU-WIDER project Fragility and Development. These investigations were presented at the UNU-WIDER project meeting...
There has been considerable media coverage of China’s trade and financial activities, on India’s emergence as a technology and innovation hub, and on the commerce and investment interactions between China, India, Brazil, and South Africa and other...
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...
In this special issue, five articles address some of the challenges associated with integrating an existing S-S regional agreement with a new template that results from block negotiations with a northern partner. The compatibility issues this raises...
Entrepreneurs are often adversely affected by violent conflict such as civil war. At the same time though entrepreneurs may contribute to or even benefit from violent conflict and other ‘destructive’ and ‘unproductive’ activities that limit economic...
Part of Journal Special Issue Public economics and development action
This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between exports, and in particular export diversity, and regional growth in a developing country context. Using export data for 19 sectors from 354 subnational (magisterial) districts of...
This paper discusses cultural barriers to women’s participation and success in the labor market in developing countries. I begin by describing how gender norms influence the relationship between economic development and female employment, as well as...
This paper reviews the small but growing literature on intergenerational educational mobility in the developing world. Education is a critical determinant of economic well-being, and it predicts a range of non-pecuniary outcomes such as marriage...
In recent years, the economy of Argentina has experienced both rapid economic growth and severe economic decline. In this paper, we use a series of one-year long panels to study who gained the most in pesos when the economy grew and who lost the most...
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...
One of the most pressing challenges in development policy is to bring about rapid, sustained, and inclusive growth in developing countries. Apart from...
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...
With the aid of an analytical framework of the Lewis model revised to reflect the experience of China, this paper examines the country’s dualistic economic development and its unique characteristics. The paper outlines the major effects of China’s...
Part of Book Social Mobility in Developing Countries
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
At the turn of the twentieth century, a large number of Europeans, mostly from Italy and Spain, left their homelands and headed to the distant shores of Argentina in response to the good economic opportunities, fertile land and hopes for a better...
Today, we see clear trends in developing countries of a potentially troubling ‘new normal’ for economic development. We see tertiarization with rising...
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...
Technological catch-up is bringing new asynchronies to development pathways. What does this mean for employment, globalization, and inequality? A...
Policy makers seeking inclusive growth frequently face the developer’s dilemma between prioritizing structural transformation, which is potentially...
To celebrate its 35th birthday, UNU-WIDER has looked back at some of its greatest achievements. As the year closes, Armida Alisjahbana, Kunal Sen...
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...
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...
Studies of the effects of technology and globalization on employment and inequality commonly assume that occupations are identical around the world in the job tasks they require. To relax this assumption, we develop a regression-based methodology to...
The management of revenues from exhaustible natural resources involves a number of challenges. In this paper, we argue that the standard policy advice to managers of resource revenues has been dominated by short-termism and the lack of a perspective...
Part of Book Inequality in the Developing World
The rule of law and judicial independence are a project yet to be achieved in Mozambique. The different attempts made so far to reform the legal system, mainly after the change in political and strategic direction brought about by the Constitution of...
The notion of ‘shared growth’ was introduced by the World Bank in recognition of East Asia’s rapid growth accompanied by poverty reduction. It emphasizes the criticality of pro-poor policies and institutional setups in the fast-developing East Asian...
This paper investigates how the two types of globalization—i.e., integration of international trade and emigration—affected poverty reduction in the Philippines. Using the Family Income and Expenditure Surveys from 1985 to 2000, we found that both...
China has experienced rapid integration into the global economy and achieved remarkable progress in poverty reduction over the last two decades. In this paper, by employing panel data covering twenty-five Chinese provinces over the period of 1986...
This paper looks into the interrelation between economic growth, inequality, and poverty. Using the notion of pro-poor growth, this study examines to what extent the poor benefit from economic growth. First, various approaches to defining and...
This paper suggests how the targeting efficiency of government programmes may be better assessed. Using the ‘pro-poor policy’ (PPP) index developed by authors, the study investigates the pro-poorness of not only government programmes geared to the...
In the last two decades, there has been a global sea change in the theory and practice of central banking. The currently dominant ‘best practice’ approach to central banking consists of the following: (1) central bank independence (2) a focus on...
This paper examines the literature on the rule of law and economic development, and in particular the influential argument by La Porta et al., on the superiority of the Anglo-American common law system in fostering financial development. In this...
In this paper we focus on the relationship between remittance inflows and financial inclusion in developing countries. We present single equation estimates on remittances and financial inclusion, and system estimates in which economic growth is...
The budgets of development NGOs have risen dramatically over the last decades. In stark contrast to bilateral donors, the geographic choices of NGOs remain virtually unexplored. Using a new dataset and Lorenz curves, this paper shows that NGOs are...
Use of migration tax as an instrument for financing development expenditure in poorer countries has received renewed attention recently and is evolving as an important subject of research in development economics. This paper discusses a related issue...
At the very time that professional skepticism concerning the effectiveness of foreign aid has reached new heights, donors seem to be ready to substantially increase the volume of aid they are willing to make available. This paper attempts to address...
Macro vulnerability of the small island developing states (SIDS) as well as of least developed countries (LDCs) has been an increasing concern for the international community. This concern has led to the creation of the economic vulnerability index...
This paper shows that foreign aid in postwar Lebanon passed through two phases with distinct features that have had far reaching implications for postwar development. In the first phase lasting from 1992-97, foreign aid was mainly channeled towards...
This paper conceptualises foreign aid as a geopolitical form of rent in order to help distinguish the conditions under which aid is detrimental to sustained economic recovery from those where it is beneficial. Foreign aid shares with natural resource...
This paper is a survey of some key variables with an international dimension and implications for growth and development policies in selected Pacific island countries. Results from a simple growth accounting exercise show that factor accumulation is...
The current consensus objective of development aid in the international community is to reduce poverty in general and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in particular. In addition, the dominant view identifies economic growth as the...
In this paper, we estimate the costs of state failure, both for the failing state itself and for its neighbours. In our analysis, the cost of failure arises from two distinct sources: organized violence due to the incapacity of the state to ensure...
Over the past few years addressing state fragility in the third world has become an important priority in international development cooperation. However, it seems that the international donor community has so far not been able to develop adequate...
The role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in small island developing states (SIDS) is an issue that has been neglected until relatively recently. The reasons for this lack of interest are unsurprising, given both the low absolute volume of capital...
This paper proposes that aid flowing to smaller (less populous) countries has a negative impact on the quality of institutions in terms of performance and policy as opposed to that flowing to larger countries, where evidence suggests that the impacts...
This paper examines macroeconomic performance and policies in small Pacific island economies (SPIEs). These economies are highly prone to various supply shocks and face severe obstacles to development arising from their geography and demography...
Globally, state failure is hugely costly. We estimate the total cost of failing states at around US$276 billion per year. In this paper we apply our global framework and methodology to analyse the cost of failing states in the Pacific Ocean. Globally...
The paper compares perspectives on the meaning of development in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the contemporary period, with a focus on the works of Dudley Seers and Amartya Sen. Both men were critical of the development literature of their times...
This paper explores the role migration has played in development studies, and in debates on economic growth and poverty. It argues that, despite a recent surge of interest in international migration and remittances, research on human mobility...
A key issue for development in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been an escalation of violence during post-conflict transitions. A long-term goal for international donor involvement is to assist in building legitimate and...
In most transitional and many developing countries institutions capable of supporting economic development with localized saving-investment cycles have not developed. This crucial gap is in no way addressed by either country-level macro programmes...
Rents tend to be relatively high in developing countries and also very fungible, so that differences in the scale of the rent and in its distribution among economic agents profoundly affect the nature of the political state and the development...
The evolution of the development doctrine over the last six decades is analysed in some detail in this paper. The development doctrine is defined as the body of knowledge consisting of four interrelated components: (1) the prevailing development...
This paper proposes a framework for incorporating longitudinal distributional changes into poverty decomposition. It is shown that changes in the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index over time can be decomposed into two components—one component reflects the...
Applying the Shapley decomposition to unit-record household survey data, this paper investigates the trends and causes of poverty in China in the 1990s. The changes in poverty trends are attributed to two proximate causes; income growth and shifts in...
The concept of convergence is extended to the human development index. Evidence of weak absolute convergence is found over 1975-2002. The results are robust and verified by various conditional β-convergence models and also supported by the evidence...
The paper views migration of skills from a perspective of new industrial policy. It introduces two types of search networks: open migration chains and diaspora networks. Migration chains are sequences of educational or job opportunities which allows...
China’s current fiscal system is largely decentralized while its governance structure is rather centralized with strong top-down mandates and a homogenous governance structure. Due to large differences in initial economic structures and revenue bases...
This paper argues that the conventional approach of data averaging is problematic for exploring the growth–inequality nexus. It introduces the polynomial inverse lag (PIL) framework so that the impacts of inequality on investment, education, and...
Systematic information on household financial asset holdings in developing countries is very sparse; we review some available data and current policy debates. Although financial asset holdings by households are highly concentrated, deeper financial...
Deepening financial development and rapid economic growth in China have been accompanied by widening income disparity between the coastal and inland regions. In this paper, by employing panel dataset for 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1990...
The purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence process in China by taking into account the spatial interaction between factors. The paper shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the spatial dependence of China’s per capita GDP in...
This paper documents the financial and institutional developments of China during the past two decades, when China was successfully transformed from a rigid central-planning economy to a dynamic market economy following its unique path. We...
This paper seeks to explain the dynamics of Brazilian industrial catch-up in the last 60 years by discussing its background institutional conditions as well as its main macroeconomic features. After a brief introduction, the second section describes...
This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and...
This paper investigates the extent to which the decline in child mortality over the last three decades can be attributed to economic growth. In doing this, it exploits the considerable variation in growth over this period, across states and over time...
The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region’s crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor...
This paper argues for an ‘ancient’ institutional school, predating Thorstein Veblen’s ‘old’ institutionalism. In this view, going back as far as the thirteenth century, institutions tended to be seen as specific to a mode of production. Here both...
Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China’s economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies...
New institutional economics lacks a theory of state formation which could help us to deal with the mega question of why some states became more efficient than others at establishing and sustaining institutions. Some kind of middle range theory could...
Taxation provides one of the principal lenses in measuring state capacity, state formation and power relations in a society. This paper critically examines three main approaches (economic, administrative and political economy) to understanding...
This paper examines the relationship between institution building and economic performance in Mauritius, Botswana and Uganda. The rationale for comparing these cases is simple. While the three have been super-economic stars in their own right, they...
During its development into a continental empire, the US, like other countries relied on the investment of capital and labour from abroad; unlike other countries, the US had a peculiar political institution, federalism, which channeled these...
The notion that good corporate governance means maximizing shareholder value derives from the neoclassical theory of the market economy. I explain why this perspective is highly problematic for understanding the operation and performance of the...
Before effective anti-poverty policy can be designed and implemented, the extent, trend and distribution of poverty must be identified. In this sense, poverty measurement is a crucial intermediate step in public policymaking and development planning...
This paper discusses the ‘developer’s dilemma’—a tension emerging from the fact that developing countries are simultaneously seeking structural transformation and broad-based growth to raise incomes of the poor. Simon Kuznets originally hypothesized...
This journal presents a synopsis of the contextual conditions, factors and challenges under which the recent evolution of tax systems has taken place, as an introduction to this United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal Policy, State Building and Economic Development
This paper examines the impact of the introduction of the value-added tax on inequality and government revenues using newly released macro data. We present both conventional country fixed effect regressions and instrumental variable analyses, where...
North Korea's economic reform began in the mid-1980s. It was motivated by the increasing seriousness of the problems typical of centrally planned socialist economies.In general, the country's reforms have so far been limited both in scope and depth...
We provide a formal model of entrepreneurship in human development. The framework is provided by the capabilities approach (CA). Hence we extend not only the conceptualisation of entrepreneurship in development, but the reach of the CA into...
The urbanization process is frequently shaped by prevailing constructions of gender. The recognition of this phenomenon is vital both in diagnosis and policy terms. This paper aims at illustrating the importance of gender in three major related...
Many economists claim that entrepreneurship is an important determinant of economic growth and development. In the sub-discipline of development economics however, entrepreneurship is largely absent from explanations of growth and development. This...
In analyzing Viet Nam's recent economic adjustments, this paper attempts to distinguish events and policies that are properly assigned to the transition effort (defined as the process of increasing the market determination of economic outcomes) and...
The article models economic growth determinants in the Dominican Republic. The exercise considers a panel of 25 candidate explanatory variables observed during the last three decades of the twentieth century. The time series are selected on the basis...
The analysis of the optimal funding of education is complicated by the numerous and serious market failures which are likely to characterize a free market for education. Prominent amongst these are the likely external benefits of education, stressed...
This paper develops and tests five hypotheses regarding the economic causes of complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs). We argue that: (1) such emergencies, involving large-scale deaths and population displacements, are most likely to occur when...
This paper is the fruit of an attempt to distinguish the elements, present in a fiscal decentralization process, that are likely to contribute to efficiency enhancement in the provision of social services in developing countries. From the...
All centrally planned economies suffered from over-investment. Due to low capital productivity, reasonable growth rates in output could be maintained only with high investment/GDP ratios. Nevertheless, the sharp reduction in investment during...
This paper seeks to explain, why Russian (and CIS) economic transformation was neither a shock therapy nor a gradual transition case, but instead followed a sort of middle ground inconsistent shock therapy path. It is argued that there were some...
We have now witnessed more than half a decade of relatively heavy capital inflows to a large group of highly heterogeneous developing countries and economies in transition in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Latin America, and parts of...
This paper analyses the long-term growth and welfare impact of the transition to the market economy in the countries of Eastern Europe. We define welfare as the average real net wage after payments of social security contributions to fund a paygo...
In Angola, the availability of two abundant resources (oil and diamonds) has prolonged the conflict beyond its Cold War context. The geography and political economy of these resources were crucial to the course taken by the conflict. Matching the...
Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. At least 45 per cent of the population cannot meet their minimum basic needs. Human development indicators are amongst Africa's worst, including a very high level of illiteracy. The country was...
This paper examines the causes and consequences of the increase in regional disparities in China during its economic transition towards a 'socialist market economy'. Part 1 seeks to explain why the 'Core' provinces in southeast China have...
This study examines the role of institutions and their change related to the rapid economic development and the 1997 Korean financial crisis. In Korea, the government built a state-led financial system through the 1960s and 1970s and a specific...
African countries face huge challenges in building democratic and cohesive societies that will enhance the wellbeing of their citizens. Even after...
The IMF model of the economic transition stresses the role of macro policy reform. It concludes that rapid reform to a market economy is preferable to slow reform because late reformers experience very steep transition recessions and severe...
The development literature considers associations an important economic development tool that allows producers to pursue their economic welfare collectively and through participatory means. This paper comparatively analyses the experience of three...
The present paper presents a short-run theoretical macroeconomic model of the type suggested in Sachs (1996), attempting to differentiate economic development in East Asia with Latin America. Latin America, when compared to East Asia is said to...
Resource-Led Growth - A Long-Term Perspective surveys the 1870-1914 experience of growth in resource-rich economies: the so-called regions of recent settlement, some tropical countries and some mineral-based export economies. First, three contrasting...
In the current debate on the relationship between inequality in income distribution and growth one of the possible link works through the access to education. After reviewing this debate, a formal model shows how the imperfection of financial markets...
Can the increasing significance of knowledge-products in national income— the growing weightless economy—influence economic development? Those technologies reduce “distance” between consumers and knowledge production. This paper analyzes a model...
The subject of economic reform is probably as large as the problems with which it has to deal. In order to understand why such a reform became necessary after 70 years of socialist development, it is essential to see it in historical perspective.
In recent decades, absolute poverty incidence declined in most countries of Southeast Asia, even though in some of these countries inequality increased at the same time. This paper examines the relationship between these outcomes and the rate of...
Africa should industrialize. Without structural change it cannot sustain recent growth. Economies with more diverse and sophisticated industrial sectors tend to grow faster. But since 1980 Africa has deindustrialized. The paper shows that between...
While land reforms have long been motivated as a potential policy lever of rural growth and development, there is remarkably little evidence of the direct impacts of such reforms. In an effort to fill this lacunae, this paper examines South Africa's...
The world lottery market now amounts to at least US$126 billion in sales. World market sales for all gaming products (public, charitable and commercial) total some US$1 trillion, of which Internet gambling accounts for US$32 billion. This paper...
In the past, research on changes in relative importance among broad three sectors—agriculture, industry, and service—showed general patterns of a country’s structural transformation along with economic development. However, there has been devoid of...
Many international organizations, governments and academics concerned with economic development look to Asia’s success, recommending that other poor countries follow similar models and paths of development. This study argues that such Asian ‘lesson...
Technological latecomer countries face a dilemma, they need to pursue pro-active industrial policies to compensate for manifold disadvantages vis-à-vis established competitors, but at the same time, due to neopatrimonial politics and capacity...
The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of institutional reforms on the revival of African economies. We study the impact of positive changes in business environment indicators of the Doing Business project and the Economic Freedom Index of...
The objectives of this paper are to examine the impact of liberalization on trade deficits and current accounts for developing economies. Attempts at liberalization in trade could lead to an increase in imports in the short run and this could cause...
This paper considers the effect of corruption on the efficiency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe...
This paper examines the macroeconomic policies and outcomes experienced by the Latin American economies during the period 1990-2010. Macroeconomic policies refer to exchange rates, monetary and aggregate fiscal policies, while macroeconomic outcomes...
The benefits from the New Economy should accrue as improvements in productivity and economic growth. But while the use of information and communication technology seems to have had a substantial impact on the performance of the United States economy...
After more than a decade of economic decline and civil war, Uganda was able to return to economic growth thanks to the policies pursued by Museveni’s National Resistance Movement which elicited considerable donor support. They include macroeconomic...
In many OECD countries income inequality has risen, but surprisingly redistribution has as well. The theory attributes this partly to the redistributive effect of education spending. In the model income inequality and growth depend in an inverted U...
The state has played a major role in the most important developmental successes. This paper discusses the advances in our understanding of the role of the state in the developmental process over the past thirty years, and the contribution to those...
This paper studies growth and inequality in China and India—two economies that account for a third of the world’s population. By modelling growth and inequality as components in a joint stochastic process, the paper calibrates the impact each has on...
When it comes to reporting on Africa, the international news media has, over time, delivered very mixed messages. Yet there are still many who characterize sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a region of hunger, economic crisis, and political unrest. Over...
How much does economic growth contribute to poverty reduction? I discuss analytical and empirical approaches to assess the poverty elasticity of growth, and emphasize that the relationship between growth and poverty change is non-constant. For a...
States’ fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural...
Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system...
The recent anti-corruption summit in London highlighted a much-publicized issue in development—transparency is crucial in the minerals sector. However...
The study discusses conditions and prospects for fast and durable growth in emerging market economies. In the course of history less than 30 nations have become rich and still more than 80 per cent of the world population lives in the middle and low...
Participatory community programmes are a potentially important tool for social empowerment and economic development. How do participatory programmes that specifically target women affect community trust and cohesion? This question is important since...
Late 1990, Egypt witnessed major and radical changes in all areas of its national life—political, legal, economic and social—as a reflection of implementing an economic reform programme in order to achieve progress in its economic indicators. This...
The contribution of the ‘new economy’ to economic growth in developing countries has so far been minimal. Despite the recent hype, the ‘old economy’ will for long be the fundamental force behind economic growth in transition economies. Nonetheless...
The concept of ‘green growth’ implies that a wide range of developmental objectives, such as job creation, economic prosperity and poverty alleviation, can be easily reconciled with environmental sustainability. This study, however, argues that...
After the Great Depression and throughout the rest of the twentieth century, Latin American countries basically approached economic development following two successive and quite opposed strategies. The first one was import substitution...
As institutional approaches have come to dominate the mainstream of development economics, they have outgrown earlier and simpler analyses of ‘property rights’. This paper focuses on the work of Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, which suggests that...
Since 1992 Ethiopia has been engaged in liberalizing its financial sector. The hallmark of the strategy is gradualism. The approach is not without problems especially from Bretton Woods Institutions that saw the reform as a sluggish process. This...
Safety nets have often been controversial instruments, condemned in some circles as short-term palliatives or even a waste of money. Much recent evidence shows that safety nets not only support poverty reduction but also economic growth. The...
Since the 1970s, prolonged use of resources by the IMF has consistently expanded, among both low- and middle-income countries. Overall, this phenomenon suggests a lack of effectiveness of Fund supported programmes. In the literature conditional...
Since the 1990s economists have devoted considerable attention to the study of the relationship between financial markets development and economic growth. In particular, the emergence of stock markets with economic development is an intriguing and...
This research paper discusses the role of institutions in the rapid growth and successful international integration of Switzerland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In analysing the emergence and consolidation of the...
Much has changed in international finance in the twenty years since UNU-WIDER was founded. This paper identifies five broad contours of what we might expect in the next twenty years: the flow of capital from ageing societies to the more youthful...
Why and when do turning points occur? How are they prepared? What are the choices before us when it comes to economic and social development policies? What is the role of culture in development? Do ideas play a role? What are the interests behind the...
The paper performs aid allocation analysis using OECD-DAC data covering 20 aid donors and 176 recipients over the period 1980-2003. We improve upon earlier work in this area by employing inter alia the variable ‘past outcome’ measuring aid...
This paper analyses the decentralization of decisionmaking in aid-giving in a theoretical rent-seeking framework. In this analysis the root donor establishes a necessary criterion for potential recipients: good governance. The potential recipients...
This paper uses a Kaldorian framework to examine the evidence of deindustrialization in developing countries at low levels of income, the jobless growth in these economies and the fast expansion of the informal sector. The questions are specifically...
This paper explores the politically determined development objectives and the intrinsic logic of government intervention policies in east developed countries. It is argued that the distorted institutional structure in China and in many least...
The ability of low-income countries to productively absorb large amounts of external assistance is a central issue for efforts to scale-up aid. This paper examines absorptive capacity in the context of MDG-based development programmes in low-income...
While the opportunities offered by globalization can be large, the question is often raised whether the actual distribution of gains is fair and, in particular, whether the poor benefit proportionately less from globalization and could under some...
This paper argues that both openness and poverty in a country are endogenously determined by the country’s long-term economic development strategy. Development strategies can be broadly divided into two mutually exclusive groups: (i) the comparative...
In this paper an attempt is made to assess the impact of economic reforms on the incidence of poverty by decomposing the change in poverty ratio between two time points into growth/mean effect, inequality effect and the population shift effect. Based...
In order to track progress in MDG1 and explicitly link growth, inequality, and poverty reduction, several measures of ‘pro-poor growth’ have been proposed in the literature and used in applied academic and policy work. These measures, particularly...
The study suggests that gender inequality acts as a significant constraint to growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and that removing gender-based barriers to growth will make a substantial contribution to realizing Africa’s economic potential. In particular...
Karl Polanyi wrote The Great Transformation in 1944 which analysed the double movement Europe experienced, from a situation where the market was heavily regulated and controlled in the eighteenth century to a virtually unregulated market in the...
Openness is not necessarily good for the poor. Reducing trade protection has not brought growth to today’s poorest countries, and open capital markets have not been good for the poorest households in emerging market economies. In this paper I present...
Health is an asset with an intrinsic value as well as an instrumental value. Good health is a source of wellbeing and highly valued throughout the world. Health is not only the absence of illness, but capacity to develop a person’s potential. Health...
This paper seeks to analyze the prospects for development in a changed international context, where globalization has diminished the policy space so essential for countries that are latecomers to development. The main theme is that, to use the...
This paper is concerned with the problems of achieving lasting peace. One dimension includes fairly sharing the post-war economic and political pie or the peace dividend. This requires post-war allocations that are envy free. Many peace agreements...
Innovations spur science-based trade and industrial development in a fast changing pace of globalization. Knowledge accumulation and diffusion have been increasingly recognised as fundamental factors that play an important role in long-run economic...
This paper studies the distribution of output per worker between the years 1980 and 2000 in different country groups. The study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to decompose the changes in the distribution of labour productivity into changes in...
There is a growing literature which analyses, using cross-country data, whether institutions or geography is the most important deep determinant of economic development. The empirical proxies for institutions used in this literature focus on the...
Many development policies and programmes are premised on a traditional economic model of rationality to predict how individuals will respond to changes in incentives. Despite the emphasis of these programmes on poverty reduction, economists and the...
At the beginning of the twenty-first century there is a rare coincidence of profound transformations in a number of areas, in population dynamics, in human settlements, in science and technology, economics, social stratification, in the role and...
Institutions are not only created and built, but also, and especially, need to be learnt. It is a process which takes place in all economies, but acquires a special importance in less advanced countries. Not only theoretical arguments, but also the...
This paper undertakes an assessment of the evolution of inequality in the distribution of consumption expenditure in India over the last quarter-century, from 1983 to 2009-10, employing data available in the quinquennial ‘thick’ surveys of the...
Under the very large majority of combinations of global mitigation efforts (emissions scenarios) and climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, a considerable amount of warming appears to be built into the global climate system. For...
Part of Journal Special Issue Economics of climate change impacts on developing countries
Charles S. Maier When the Berlin Wall fell, twenty years ago, on 9 November 1989, many expected that the East German (German Democratic Republic - DDR...
This paper attempts to analyse the economic implications of the rise of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, for developing countries situated in the wider context of the world economy. It examines the possible impact of their rapid growth on...
This article views the four economies of the South in a long run historical perspective of 1500-2000. It contrasts the history and the initial endowments of the two Northern hemisphere economies China and India which are land scarce and labour...
In 2015 WIDER Annual Lecture 19 was given by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. He discussed the overall challenge of sustainable and human-focused development including new and old challenges. Much progress has been made on the old issues of poverty and...
Well before the introduction of adjustment-related Social Funds (SFs), many developing countries had developed a variety of safety nets comprising food subsidies, nutrition interventions, employment-based schemes and targeted transfers. Middle-income...
A basic intellectual challenge for those concerned with the poverty of nations is to come to grips with the nature and causes of the wealth of the world’s wealthier nations. One might then be in a position to inform the poorer nations how they might...
In this paper we examine whether absorptive capacity can constitute sufficient justification for rejecting the proposal of a large aid increase to support the ‘big push’. We argue that the probability of a poverty trap exists for many countries, in...
Support for entrepreneurship is widely seen as a mechanism to facilitate prosperity and peace in a growing number of post-conflict states. In this paper I critically evaluate this view. I argue that entrepreneurship is a ubiquitous quality in post...
The record of aid to fragile and poorly-performing states is the real test of aid effectiveness. Rich countries can justify aid to fragile states both through altruism and self-interest. But, with some exceptions, donors have appeared at the wrong...
This study is premised on the view that reports circulating in the 1990s, claiming foreign aid was in terminal crisis, were premature. Aid’s reviving fortunes are explained in terms both of a growing awareness of the uneven implications of...
One of the main reasons for launching a radical economic reform in the USSR is that the previous system of rigid administrative management failed to become efficient and to react adequately to internal and external developments. Disproportions and...
This paper examines trends in income distribution and its linkages to economic growth and poverty reduction in order to understand the prospects for achieving poverty reduction in Africa. We examine the levels and trends in income distribution in...
This study presents new empirical results, using microdata from the LIS database, on development patterns in economic inequality for a set of countries that are less covered in the empirical literature, mostly due to the lack of appropriate data...
Spatially disaggregated maps of the incidence of poverty can be constructed by combining household survey data and census data. In some countries (notably China and India), national statistics agencies are reluctant, for reasons of confidentiality...
In this paper we elaborate on the findings produced by an applied equilibrium model that is used to calculate the annual efficiency gains from free international migration. These findings suggest that we can expect significant gains from liberalizing...
This paper surveys the various composite well-being indices that have been inter-country assessments over the last 40 or so years, including the well known Human Development Index (HDI). A number of issues are considered, including the choice of...
The objective here is to understand how the mobility of technical talent might be changing the structural relationship between rich and poor countries. This paper examines the under-researched relationship between India and Japan in the context of...
There is a widespread view that political criteria have received less emphasis in aid allocation since the end of the cold war, with a greater share of aid subsequently being based on developmental criteria. An observed increase in aid effectiveness...
Despite the fast catching-up in ICT diffusion experienced by most EU countries in the last few years, information technologies have so far delivered little productivity gains in Europe. In the second half of the past decade, growth contributions from...
This paper reviews Finnish economic history during the 'long' twentieth century with a special emphasis on policies for equity and growth. We argue that Finland developed from a poor, vulnerable, and conflict-prone country to a modern economy in part...
Alternative approaches to modelling distributional and welfare effects of changes in policy and the economic environment in developing and transition countries are surveyed. Microsimulations range from pure accounting approaches to models with...
This paper discusses development policy objectives, noting how these have changed over the years, with a more explicit focus on poverty reduction coming recently to the fore. It also examines the relationship between economic growth and poverty...
Countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone are now attempting to recover from major wars, often amidst continuing insecurity. The challenge is to achieve a broad-based recovery that benefits the majority of people. The economic and...
The political economy of civil wars has acquired unprecedented scholarly and policy attention. Among others, the International Peace Academy’s programme on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (EACW) has aimed to contribute to a better understanding of the...
The paper offers a critical literature review of the debate surrounding the globalization-poverty nexus, focusing on channels and linkages through which globalization affects the poor. After introducing four different concepts used to measure trends...
This paper summarises research on aid allocation and effectiveness, highlighting the current findings of recent research on aid allocation to fragile states. Fragile states are defined by the donor community as those with either critically poor...
This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty...
Analysing a large sample of 1980–2004 unbalanced panel data, the current study presents comparative global evidence on the role of (income) inequality in poverty reduction. The evidence involves both an indirect channel via the tendency of high...
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...
Charitable donations by private individuals and firms can help fund the Millennium Development Goals. What are the prospects for increasing donations for international development, whether from small-scale donors, the super-rich (as in the recent...
This study gauges the status of transition in the formerly centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, using a broad approach that compares countries with respect to their business environment, competition, and managerial...
This paper positions itself among the very rare microeconomic analyses on the consequences of civil war. Up to now, most analyses on this topic are based upon household surveys. The originality of the present study is that it investigates for the...
This paper provides a synthesis of the three papers on the non-Nordic developed economies, Ireland, Japan and Switzerland along the following themes: role of the state, openness, education and human capital, and macroeconomic stability. It then draws...
The paper presents a model in which credit-constrained firms might delay the adoption of new and more productive technologies because of the very high external financing costs they face. Our point of departure is that the efficiency of the banking...
The main characteristics of 'the Swedish model' are arguably related to the country's knowledge-intensive industry and its advanced welfare state. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the historical development of these two features of the Swedish...
With the help of a simple model of production and trade, we examine the differential impact of tariff escalation on skilled and unskilled wages in an economy. Our findings provide a lobbying-based explanation of the prevalence of tariff escalation in...
Revenues from taxation gain in importance to finance economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. One obstacle to enhancing the willingness to remit taxes can be the extortion of bribes by public officials. Using micro-level data from the...
Accurate regional estimates of output are desired as an indicator of level of development and as a variable used to explain internal migration, demand patterns, fertility and other aspects of behaviour. This chapter explores one often neglected...
This paper examines growth successes and failures across countries and notes the latter’s perplexing predominance among ex ante low-income economies. An explanation for this persistence of underdevelopment is proposed through an empirical...
This paper extends the history of thought narrative on Allyn Young to recognize the close relationship that the classical growth theory has with the early development theory, as Young’s externalities-fuelled, cumulative growth process influenced the...
Can agricultural development programs improve health-related outcomes? We exploit a spatial discontinuity in the coverage of a large-scale agricultural extensionprogram in Uganda to causally identify its effects on malaria. We find that eligibility...
Over the last decade, India has been one of the fastest growing economies, and has experienced considerable decline in overall income poverty. However, in a vast country like India, poverty levels vary significantly across the different states. In...
Two precisely comparable national household surveys relating to 1988 and 1995 are used to analyse changes in the inequality of income in urban China. Over those seven years province mean income per capita grew rapidly but diverged across provinces...
The 2016 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank occur during uncertain times for the “African Growth Miracle.” After...
The paper contributes to the empirics of aid and growth by taking a fresh look at the aid-policies-growth nexus emanating from the very influential but also debatable paper on the subject by Burnside and Dollar: ‘Aid, Policies and Growth’. We employ...
In the beginning of the 1980s, Cameroon witnessed a sustained rate of growth, associated essentially with the boom in the oil sector. Increased budgetary and extra-budgetary resources generated by this sector helped to raise the investment rate in...
Access to water and sanitation (target 10) is an important ingredient of quality of life. As per WHO-UNICEF assessments, globally, 77 per cent of population had access to water in 1990. This proportion has increased to 83 per cent in 2002, thus, on...
This paper argues that poverty originates in the structural injustices of a social order which incapacitates the poor from participating in the growth generating sectors of the economy and leaves them captives in the so called informal sector...
The ILO was founded for social justice, a mandate expressed today in terms of decent work as a global goal, for all who work, whether in formal or informal contexts. In June 2002, the delegates to the International Labour Conference from governments...
The paper considers the political obstacles and supports for additional development finance and a number of possible devices through which advantage may be taken of the supports and the obstacles circumvented. It emphasizes the need for effective...
International narratives on Argentina’s recovery from the crisis of 2001-02 tend to emphasize the role of rising commodity prices and growing demand from China. Argentina is said to have been ‘lucky’, saved by global demand for its agricultural...
I spent the last couple of days at a fascinating workshop at UNU-WIDER on the role of extractive industries in development. Tony Addison, UNU-WIDER...
Thailand’s development strategy has been strongly market-oriented and open to trade and investment flows with the rest of the world. Since the late 1950s, its growth performance has been outstanding. Poverty incidence has declined dramatically, but...
The study presents recent global evidence on the transformation of economic growth to poverty reduction in developing countries, with emphasis on the role of income inequality. The focus is on the period since the early/mid-1990s when growth in these...
Human talent is a key economic resource and a source of creative power in science, technology, business, arts and culture and other activities. Talent has a large economic value and its mobility has increased with globalization, the spread of new...
This paper brings out that poverty increased massively in the wake of the 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc, despite a significant recovery of economic growth. Although this increase affected all the social groups, it fell mostly on the urban poor...
The paper identifies and examines those factors that have affected growth in the CFA franc zone countries relative to the non CFA countries. It examines the special arrangements between franc zone countries and France, which give some advantages that...
This paper outlines the impact of the global economic crisis on Africa. Recovery requires coordinated and consistent efforts to assist individual countries in mitigating (reducing) the risk, coping with the impact, and reducing risk over the longer...
Factors determining the diffusion of digital mobile telephony across 200 developed and developing countries in the 1990s are studied with the aid of a Gompertz model. The market size and network effects are found to play more important roles in the...
This paper investigates the impacts and responses of macroeconomic shocks in some domestic economies in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1961-99; more specifically, it seeks to answer the question of whether there are any systematic differences in...
South Africa is characterized by significant inequality in spatial economic activity. Whether future growth and development on a subnational level in South Africa will be such as to reduce this inequality may depend on the economic growth and...
This paper explores entrepreneurship amongst return migrants, how their business locations and characteristics differ from other businesses, and the implications for rural-urban inequality. First, we examine, amongst returnees, the determinants of...
There is increasing evidence to suggest that a fundamental source of information for farmers on how to access and use new agricultural technologies comes from interacting with neighbours. Economic research on adoption of innovations in a rural...
The causes of the slow growth of CFA countries are investigated. There is little difference in this respect between the CFA and other sub-Saharan African countries. Since 1970, GDP growth in the CFA countries has shown no significant trend but one or...
This paper examines the theoretical and empirical evidence for the hypothesis that manufacturing is the main engine of growth in developing countries. The paper opens with an overview of the main arguments supporting the engine of growth hypothesis...
In the age of globalization, the question whether inequality in the world rose or fell down, is a hot topic. Leading scholars in the field of economic inequality measurement developed methods to estimate empirically the distribution of welfare...
Efforts to realize the issue of development-focused Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been on-going for many years. Recently, however, the campaign first gained a new momentum immediately after the Asian...
Economic measures of income have ignored large areas of human well-being and are poor measures of well-being in the areas to which they attend. Despite increased recognition of those distortions, ‘GNP per capita continues to be regarded as the...
Purposeful, well-targeted and successful transformation policies will be elusive for a country or region that does not understand the relative importance of its sectoral sources of growth. This study aims at eliciting our understanding in this...
This paper examines Indonesia’s industrialization performance and policies, including its latecomer status, its generally rapid growth since the mid-1960s, its pronounced policy and performance episodes, and its ambivalent embrace of globalization...
The current paper, first, finds that although the post-independence growth of African economies has fallen substantially below that of other regions, this comparative evidence is less than uniform across time and countries. Second, it uncovers total...
In this scooping paper on the Tunisian economy we review the historical background of the economy which has undergone substantial structural change since independence in 1956. In particular we emphasize that past record of consistent growth has often...
A sustainable pathway for Africa in the twenty-first century is laid out in the setting of the development of innovation capabilities and the capture of latecomer advantages. Africa has missed out on these possibilities in the twentieth century while...
Does democracy promote economic growth? There is still an ongoing debate over the economic implications of democracy, and this question has gained critical importance particularly in the African context, where a wave of democratization in the early...
The informal sector makes up an overwhelming share of both gross domestic product and total employment in Africa. In this paper, we lay out some of the basic characteristics of the informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa, relevant institutions, and...
The structure of the Nigerian economy is typical of an underdeveloped country. The primary sector, in particular, the oil and gas sector, dominates the gross domestic product accounting for over 95 per cent of export earnings and about 85 per cent of...
How does innovation impact on development? How, and under what conditions, do entrepreneurs in developing countries innovate? And what can be done to support innovation by entrepreneurs in developing countries? This policy brief addresses these...
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...
What, if anything, can today's developing countries learn from the past strategies of more advanced countries? the answer is 'a great deal', despite the obvious fact that the development environment has changed significantly. Based on 11 themes, this...
What can the less well-off developing countries learn from the ’successes’ of other developing countries? This Policy Brief highlights successful development strategies and lessons from in-depth case studies of select countries from the developing...
Structural transformation is a pre-requisite for sustained growth and poverty reduction — such was the conviction of development economists in the mid twentieth century. They demonstrated empirically that moving resources out of low-productivity...
New challenges and emerging paradigms have turned industrialization and industrial policy into one of the most hotly debated and interesting issues of the early twenty-first century. Both the role of manufacturing in economic development and the...
The main theme of this manuscript is to demonstrate that growth in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries has continued to decline under the burden of the foreign debt over the last fifteen years. After a decade of painful lost growth, the continent...
The main purpose of this paper is to argue that Ghana's economic recovery under SAP would have been much brighter if policy makers had not made some obvious errors in the application of the theory of 'comparative advantage' and in the selection...
Several large-scale efforts have been made to combat malaria in the last decade under the Millennium Development Goals, and while these have led to a...
The benefits from the New Economy should accrue as improvements in productivity and economic growth. But while the use of information and communication technology (ICT) seems to have had a substantial impact on the performance of the United States...
The mechanism and dynamics of the recent economic developments in Poland determine the mechanism and the implementation methods for adjustment programmes and stabilization policies. The syndrome of crisis phenomena in Poland is composed of three...
A good deal is known about what makes for successful economic development, but very little is known about how to get there - that entails an understanding of the process of economic change. The paper first examines the sources of successful growth...
In examining the welfare situation, this paper explores the relationship between economic changes and social development in Asian transition economies. Under the central planning system, achievements in human development in these countries were...
According to information issued at the World Food Summit held in Rome in 1996, about one fifth of the world's population is now living under the poverty line, and this number is increase by 25 million people in developing countries every year. For...
This paper analyses the rationale of interventions in foreign exchange markets in Sub- Saharan Africa and reviews exchange rate theory and balance of payments management and its application to African countries. It analyses the liberalization of...
As seen from the year 2001, economic policy in developing and post-socialist economies during the preceding 10-15 years had one dominating theme - external 'liberalization' or the drastic lowering or removal of long-standing barriers to almost all...
In this paper we propose to measure the inequality of educational achievements by constructing a Gini index on educational attainments. We then use the proposed measure to analyse the relationship between inequality in incomes and educational...
The impressive economic growth record of Thailand before 1997 was dominated by the increasing importance of modem industrialization, as well as the expansion of other sectors. This occurred at the expense of agriculture, which accounts for the...
This study attempts to investigate and assess the impact of financial liberalization and the ongoing rise of financial rents on income distribution in the post-1980 Turkish economy. Our quantitative investigation of the dynamics of macroeconomic...
This study examines the empirical relationship among inequality, poverty and economic growth in India. Using data on consumption from the 13th to the 53rd Rounds of the National Sample Survey, the author computes, for both rural and urban sectors...
While unequal land ownership has a role to play in explaining historically high levels of income inequality, this paper asks what role agrarian structure plays in explaining contemporary trends of increasing income inequality. Using a Gini...
This paper reviews main S&D provisions for developing countries under the GATT-WTO trading system and discusses issues relating to the future of S&D treatment from the perspective of the least-developed countries (LDCs). It argues that negotiations...
This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on Property Rights Regimes, Microeconomic Incentives and Development. It identifies the major research interests, questions, and focuses. The theoretical...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
The six studies, selected from those contributed to the research project entitled The Integration of the New Market Economies of Europe and Asia into the World Economy: the Changing Internal and External Factors and Global Implications, open with...
In this paper I estimate a non-traditional export performance equation for a panel of 60 developing countries. As an input to the export model, I also estimate a panel regression model of the real exchange rate (RER) for the same countries. The RER...
Since the 1960s the resource-rich developing economies have under-performed compared with the resource-deficient economies. This paper explains why and outlines the reforms that are required in order to achieve environmentally and socially...
There is substantial evidence that new information technologies are in many ways transforming the operations of modern economies. More than half of employees use a computer at work in the most advanced industrial countries. About 10 per cent of the...
This paper discusses new ideas in growth theory focusing on how to make sustained growth feasible. It first reviews models that broadened the notion of capital to include human capital and the state of technology. The paper next surveys models which...
This paper considers the rationale for and limitations to selective export promotion policies in developing countries, with a focus on manufactured exports. It draws upon the experience of the most successful exporters in the developing world - the...
Towards the Abyss? The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti analyzes the various factors that have contributed to create a protracted humanitarian emergency situation in Haiti. The first section deals with the economic causes, the interplay...
This paper focuses on inequality in living standards across oblasts and regions within Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Regional inequality is an important area of research and policy development. Inequality...
The purpose of this paper is to establish some basic facts about income inequality in the Philippines, with a special focus on the importance of spatial income inequality. Despite major fluctuations in macroeconomic performances, income inequality...
This paper surveys issues related to globalization, and the obstacles to the successful integration of vulnerable economies. For many developing countries, the positive benefits of the increased globalization that has been taking place since around...
This paper explores the impacts of information technology investment on economic growth in a cross-section of 39 countries in the period 1980-95 by applying an explicit model of economic growth, the augmented version of the neoclassical (Solow)...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.Africa has achieved a much-improved agricultural and economic growth performance over the last 15 years. During 2003-2010 the agricultural sector grew at an annual average rate of almost...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Part of Journal Special Issue Sustainability of External Development Finance
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Despite the fast catching up in the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) experienced by most EU countries in the last few years, information technologies have so far delivered few productivity gains in Europe. In the second...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
Part of Book Industries without Smokestacks
Kuwait is a well endowed, small and open economy. In this economy the Government is the owner of the bulk of the wealth. Its wealth comes basically from underground oil and oil-accumulated assets. Since there is virtually no tax, the government...
Part of Book Towards Gender Equity in Development
Manufacturing production in both developed and developing economies tends to be highly geographically concentrated in cities and industrial clusters...
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been praised as an important development tool, especially for countries at low levels of industrial development...
Imed Drine The climate change threat North Africa is going through a turbulent year. With much of the focus on political transition, there is a danger...
Jo Beall, Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, and Ravi Kanbur By many estimates, the world has just crossed the point where more than half the global population...
This policy brief reports the main findings of the study on changes in within-country income inequality over the last two decades and on the links between poverty, inequality, and growth. It focuses on inequality at the national level, i.e. the...
Talent (combining creativity, education, skills, and knowledge) is associated with human capital and provides a very valuable economic resource. In the past, the emigration of human capital from developing countries raised fears because of the...
Despite the enormous potential of globalization in accelerating economic growth through greater integration into the world economy the impact of globalization on poverty reduction has been uneven. Asia has been the major beneficiary of globalization...
This policy brief provides some fresh perspectives on the relationship between entrepreneurship and development, and considers policy design issues. It reports on the UNU-WIDER two-year research project 'Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity', which...
This Policy Brief focuses on links between the developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s spectacular growth on developing economies and the rest of the...
We are pleased to announce a Special Issue of the Small Business Economics Journal on Entrepreneurship, Developing Countries and Development Economics, guest edited by Wim Naudé. With more than a billion people living in absolute poverty it is of...
Despite advancements for gender equality in some spheres, labour market outcomes for women continue to be worse than for men. Gender gaps in pay, labour force participation rates, and measures of job quality are stubbornly persistent and continue to...
The pathways to economic development are changing. Environmental sustainability is no longer a choice but a necessity to maintain a competitive edge in the global economy. Just like in nature, where survival hinges on adaptation, this publication...
This paper estimated models for GDP growth rates, poverty levels, and inequality measures for the period 1990–2000 using data on 54 developing countries at five-yearly intervals. Issues of globalization were investigated by analysing the differential...
The literature on aid has come a long way in recent years, and as a result we now know much more about aid effectiveness than possibly ever before. But significant gaps in knowledge remain. One such gap is the effectiveness of aid in the so-called...
As we conclude the groundbreaking years of the 2019–2023 work programme on transforming economies, states, and societies, we reflect on the milestones...
While it is recognised that the ability of states to raise revenues (i.e., fiscal capacity) is important for the provision of key public goods in less developed economies, it is less clear what its determinants are and what explains cross-country...
The feeble results of liberalization policies in Latin America are explained in terms of a multiple steady state model including a dynamic human development trap, endogenous technological change, technology transfer and trade. Divergent and...
Japan has emerged in recent years as a leading donor country to African countries. At one level, Japan’s renewed assertiveness in providing foreign aid to Africa is on par with the more active approach by other donor countries. Some might argue that...
This paper examines whether foreign aid in education has a significant effect on growth. We take into consideration the heterogeneous nature of aid as well as the heterogeneity of aid recipients—we disaggregate the aid data into primary, secondary...
The reduction of child mortality is one of the most universally accepted Millennium Goals. However, there is a significant debate on the means of reaching it and its realism with regard to the situation in most of the least developed countries. The...
Most small island economies or ‘microstates’ have distinctly different characteristics from larger developing economies. They are more open and vulnerable to external and environmental shocks, resulting in high output volatility. Most of them also...
Taxation is a crucial source of revenue for countries around the world and plays an important role in development efforts. In order to truly foster...
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Symposium on Spatial Inequality in Latin America
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been successfully used as an industrial policy tool in many countries. Efforts to create SEZs in Tanzania began in 2002, and were stepped up through the establishment of the Export Processing Zone Authority (EPZA)...
by S. Mansoob Murshed The WIDER research project on 'Globalization and the Obstacles to the Successful Integration of Vulnerable Economies' is...
by Veli-Pekka Niitamo Great challenges must be over come if the emerging ‘mobile information society’ is to be affordable and accessible worldwide...
by Danny T. Quah For the last fifty years, economists and development practitioners have viewed the accumulation of physical capital-machines...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fragility and Development in Small Island Developing States
Part of Journal Special Issue Fragility and Development in Small Island Developing States
Part of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship and Conflict
Part of Book The Rise of China and India
Part of Book Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century
Part of Journal Special Issue Female Entrepreneurship Across Countries and in Development
Part of Book Foreign Aid for Development
Part of Book Foreign Aid for Development
Part of Book Foreign Aid for Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
Part of Journal Special Issue Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
Part of Book Achieving Development Success
Part of Book Urbanization and Development
Part of Book Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Economic Development
Part of Book Achieving Development Success
Part of Journal Special Issue Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Part of Book Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century
Part of Journal Special Issue Land and Property Rights
Part of Book Understanding Small-Island Developing States
There has been a revival of interest in the state’s role in economic development. Recent research argues that the most successful economies are those where effective states provide crucial public goods and services. The historical emergence of...
This publication examines the process of economic development of the last 50 years or so under the neoliberal model in terms of impacts on growth, inflation, income and wealth distribution and structural change. The analysis includes a historical...
In this paper, we formalize the view that economic development requires high rates of productive entrepreneurship, and this requires an efficient matching between entrepreneurial talent and production technologies. We first explore the role of...
Examined in the present study is the extent to which inequality influences the effectiveness of income growth in poverty reduction, based on 1990s data for a sample of African economies. An analysis-of-covariance model is derived and estimated, with...
Progress in achieving institutional changes should be evaluated through the prism of their influence on the development abilities of the relevant country. In Poland, during 20 years of comprehensive systemic shift, GDP increased more than in any...
This paper offers a broad overview of the Hungarian development strategy over the past two decades. Combining historical and functional analysis, some major strengths and weaknesses are identified, with special emphasis on the country’s open-door...
This paper discusses the difficulties associated with measuring entrepreneurship in developing countries. Three important dichotomies in the research on entrepreneurship are discussed: formal-informal, legal-illegal, and necessity-opportunity...
Entrepreneurship has been a topical issue in the business administration literature, but in the past decade a wave of interest can be observed on the role of entrepreneurship in the economic growth literature. This paper aims to highlight the various...
This piece synthesizes the development strategies of Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and draws some relevant lessons. Using a complex adaptive systems approach, strategic openness, a set of heterodox macroeconomic policies, creation of...
The paper examines the relationship between conflict and entrepreneurial activity in Afghanistan, drawing upon a unique data set, the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment household survey 2005. Afghanistan is severely underdeveloped and poor...
Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa are sub-Saharan African countries that stand out for their development progress. Each of these countries has succeeded against the odds, against expectations. This paper synthesizes the common ingredients...
The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of recruitment of elites due to globalization. In the last century, the main change that occurred in the way the Western world trained its elites is that meritocracy became the basis for their...
It is commonly believed that the business environment in developing countries does not allow productive technology-based entrepreneurship to flourish. In this paper, we draw on the experience of Indian software firms where entrepreneurial growth has...
This paper assesses the institutional constraints on the effectiveness of the United Nations over the course of its existence, especially in relation to its central mission to promote international peace and security. Only passing attention is...
The current research on entrepreneurship as an economic phenomenon often assumes its desirability as a driver of economic development and growth. However, entrepreneurial talent can be allocated among productive, unproductive, and destructive...
During the socialist era the communist regime attempted to reduce development differentials among states and social classes. In contrast, during the last 20 years, the economies in transition experienced considerable divergence in the economic...
This paper aims towards better understanding the role of entrepreneurship in fragile states, which despite the practical interest and relevance has been somewhat disregarded in academic research. Given the necessity to support policy formulation with...
The global economic crisis beginning in 2008 has come at a very inopportune time for Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) appeared to be on a march toward real economic and human progress, following the dismal performance of the 1980s and early 1990s...
The paper discusses views on China and India as country role models. In so doing the article recounts the economic and political reforms pursued by the two countries. The paper also outlines the outstanding reforms and the bottlenecks that could...
This paper examines data on urbanization. We review the most commonly used data sources, and highlight the difficulties inherent in defining and measuring the size of urban versus rural populations. We show that differences in the measurement of...
This paper examines the possible implications for the financial systems of low-income African economies and in particular Tanzania of their stated aspiration to achieve middle-income status. In doing so it finds little evidence that the mere increase...
There has been a growing recognition among scholars that politics matters in the distribution of resources in society. However, attempts to use a political economy ‘lens’ with which to explore causes of poverty and strategies for poverty alleviation...
The Nordic countries are often bundled together, as representatives of a ‘model’ which combines high living standards and an open market economy with social insurance and ambitious public services. Yet, the economic and political development of...
The paper documents the economic development strategies pursued by the Dominican Republic. The study argues that the country’s success results from the implementation of a three-pronged economic development strategy. The first prong relates to...
Drawing on insights from Latin America, this paper examines the factors that contributed to the use of populist strategies by political parties during recent presidential elections in Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia. Specifically, the paper argues...
Oil was discovered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) just 50 years ago. During that time, UAE has been able to transform itself into a rapidly modernizing country, which is fast becoming a major economic hub and a key player on the international...
This paper calls for a fresh look at industrial policies in the light of recent trends and developments in the global economy. In particular, five new challenges and their implications for industrial policies are discussed. These have been neglected...
The last five decades have witnessed a profound evolution of economic policy in developing countries, particularly in the case of trade strategies. Both internal, as well as external, factors have prompted the need for more outward-oriented (or...
What makes elites developmental instead of predatory? We argue that Mozambique’s elite was developmental at independence 35 years ago. With pressure and encouragement from international forces, it became predatory. It has now partly returned to its...
Malaysian economic development has been shaped by public policy in response to changing national and external conditions. Public investments peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s, until the policy reversals driven by sovereign debt concerns and new...
Rapid economic development in China in the post-1978 era has been considered 'intriguing' and 'puzzling' since it occurred under the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party – the fusion of politics and economics is supposed to be a powerful...