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Green Growth: A Win-Win Approach to Sustainable Development?Danielle Resnick and James Thurlow The concept of ‘green growth’ is one which has understandable political currency, highlighted by its prominence in...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
This Special Issue brings together papers from UNU-WIDER Conference on Poverty and Behavioural Economics that were accepted after the peer review process of the journal. The eight papers in this Special Issue all share the objective of exploring the...
With entries from leading international scholars from around the world, this eight-volume encyclopedia offers the widest possible coverage of key areas both regionally and globally. The International Encyclopedia of Political Science provides a...
Much of the debate on green growth and environmental governance tends to be general in nature, and is often conceptual or limited to single disciplines. Even though recent discussions on these topics have benefited from the accumulation of empirical...
The global economic crisis beginning in 2008 has come at an inopportune time for Africa. Economic growth had recovered, poverty had declined, and human development had improved. Then the crisis hit. Growth then fell by 60 per cent. The growth decline...
We introduce a linked modeling framework based on existing computable general equilibrium and energy planning models for South Africa. The combined model provides for a more accurate assessment of the macroeconomic impacts of detailed energy build...
Malawi confronts a growth and development imperative that it must meet in a context characterised by rising temperatures and deep uncertainty about trends in precipitation. This article evaluates the potential implications of climate change for...
This special issue of the Journal of Development Economics originates from a UNU-WIDER research project on land inequality and decentralized governance in LDCs. The research began in late 2010 with Dilip Mookherjee and Pranab Bardhan jointly...
In this article we provide an introduction to the papers in the special section of this edition of the European Journal of Development Research. We start by framing the challenges posed by female entrepreneurship to the research community, note some...
Fast-growing developing countries have emerged as an important destination and source of trade, investments and technology. Furthermore, trade between developing countries has grown rapidly over the last decades, and is becoming more diversified...
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) between the European Union (EU) and trade partners go far beyond mere elimination of tariffs to include such diverse issues as non-tariff barriers, competition legislation, investment protection, and more. Implementing...
Brazil’s recent growth has been intensely pro-poor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. It has been suggested that Brazil’s unexpected successes are the outcome of a new model of development. The paper...
Political scientists have generally seen two key features of African political economies—a relatively small or absent middle class, and a middle class that is unusually embedded in the state—as key explanations of the troubled political and economic...
The effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. The limitations of aggregated data at sub-national levels have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household surveys. As an alternative, this paper contributes to the...
This paper examines the current interest in addressing the problem of young people’s unemployment in Africa through agriculture. Using notions of transitions and mobilities we set out a transformative work and opportunity space framework that...
This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to...
In this paper we explore the extent to which firms experience productivity spillovers from clustering using a rich data source from Vietnam for 2002 to 2007, a period of significant transition. We address issues of simultaneity, self-selection and...