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Inclusive Growth in Africa
24 September 2013 Roger Williamson Another big weekend for UNU-WIDER. The stage was well set on Thursday 19 September for a consideration of...
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Blog
Brazil's Economics Success: Lessons for Africa – An Interview with Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann
24 January 2014 In this interview Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann give an introduction to their research project at the Brooks World Poverty Institute...
Blog
Africa's Failure to Industrialize: Bad Luck or Bad Policy?
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not...
Blog
Africa’s Low Hanging Fruits23 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...
Blog
Reflections on Transition: Twenty Years after the Fall of The Berlin Wall
Gérard Roland The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki...
Blog
The Macroeconomic Management of Foreign AidTony Addison, Tseday Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott, Finn Tarp, Tuuli Ylinen To meet development objectives, aid recipients and their donor...
Blog
Jobs are Development
Carl-Gustav Lindén One important part of ReCom–Research and Communication on Foreign Aid is the sharing of results. October saw the largest effort so...
Working Paper
Scoping Paper on Kenyan ManufacturingThree major policy regimes, namely import substitution, market liberalization and export promotion have greatly influenced Kenyan industrialization since independence in 1963. Overall, import substitution strategy was successful in establishing some...
Working Paper
New patterns of structural change and effects on inclusive developmentThis study explores the question of structural change and inclusive development in South Africa and Brazil. Using Census data from the two countries, the analysis combines a household level multidimensional indicator of well-being with the...
Blog
Animal Spirits
Tony Addison 'Birds of a feather flock together', the old saying goes. So too do investors. Today, those investment birds are a depressed lot. The...
Journal Special Issue
Neglected Key Issues in the Transition DebateSince the gradual introduction of market reforms in China in 1978 and their sudden, rapid and widespread adoption in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, the transition has generated an intense debate on the...
Working Paper
The Practice of Industrial Policy – Lessons for AfricaAfrican countries are facing great opportunities but also formidable challenges in accelerating economic growth and sustaining a high level of economic performance. The experiences of East Asian countries may offer valuable insights for African...
Working Paper
Policy Co-ordination and Growth Traps in a Middle-income Country SettingSouth Africa has exhibited tepid economic growth over the past twenty years as well as high levels of income inequality characteristic of a middle income country growth trap. This paper compares and contrasts South Africa’s growth trap relative to...
Working Paper
Skills and Youth Entrepreneurship in AfricaThe shortages of entrepreneurial skills have lowered search effectiveness of potential young entrepreneurs and the rate of youth start-ups. Our paper contributes to closing the gap in the entrepreneurship and development literature with a model of...
Working Paper
Burkina FasoBurkina Faso has experienced quite significant aggregate growth over the past two decades, but that growth has not been transformed into poverty reduction. The key obstacles preventing large-scale escape from poverty are very high population growth...
Working Paper
Liberalization, Globalization and Income DistributionRecent mainstream analyses of changes in income distribution over the post World War II period have concluded that income inequality within countries tends to be stable, that there is no strong association between growth and inequality and that...
Working Paper
Social Funds in Stabilization and Adjustment ProgrammesWell 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...
Working Paper
The Impact of Financial Liberalization and the Rise of Financial Rents on Income InequalityThis 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...
Working Paper
Budgetary Institutions and Fiscal Consolidation in GhanaTo halt the deterioration of their national economy most African governments embarked on IMF and World Bank supported Structural Adjustment Programmes. These programmes have been criticised as neglecting social costs and promoting export-led growth...
Blog
From The Editor's Desk (December 2012)
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...
Blog
The Chilean Development Model and the Limits of Neoliberal Economics
Andrés Solimano Chile underwent a free market revolution initiated by the Pinochet regime in the 1970s and 1980s. A very similar model, with some...
Blog
After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Some Lessons on Transition
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London was the setting on 19 June 2012 for the launch of the...
Blog
What Did You Do in the Currency Wars? (Part I)
Tony Addison The present currency turmoil is both a symptom and a cause of profound changes now underway in the global economy. In part 1 of this two...
Blog
The View from Buenos Aires
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...
Working Paper
Liberalized and Neglected?Food marketing is one of the fields where structural adjustment has been implemented throughout the Sub-Saharan Africa. This study analyses the impact of reform on the functioning and efficiency of food marketing. It is based on a comparative...
Working Paper
The Liberalization of Food Marketing in Sub-Saharan AfricaLiberalization of food marketings has been implemented as a part of structural adjustment programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this study we assess the i) the aims of the reform policy, ii) the implementation of specific reform measures, iii) the...
Working Paper
Health Effects of Market-Based Reforms in Developing CountriesRadical and simultaneous economic reforms were implemented in many developing countries, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many of these reforms - structural adjustment programmes - were implemented with...
Annual Lecture
From Flying Geese to Leading DragonsStructural 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...
Working Paper
External Imbalances, Famines And EntitlementsThe study proceeded by broadly categorizing the various defects of the economy as manifestations of two disequilibria in the system. The first disequilibrium pertains to the internal imbalances as reflected mainly by the stagnation in economic growth...
Journal Article
Policy-based lending, structural adjustment and economic growth in PakistanThis paper provides an econometric analysis of Pakistan’s structural adjustment program. Introduced in 1980, this program has been supported by the World Bank and IMF under their policy-based lending regimes. Building on recent advances in modelling...
Blog
How the World Works: Jobs and Structural Transformation as Keys to Development
27 August 2014 Roger Williamson The themes of the new UNU-WIDER work programme—transformation, inclusion, and sustainability—were the focus of the...
Blog
Growth Yes, but where’s the Transformation and Inclusion?
26 March 2014 Roger Williamson Africa is growing, with The Economist noting that 6 out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economies for 2000-10 were...
Blog
Financial Reforms and Falling Inequality in Latin America, 2002-2012: Are They Connected?
29 October 2014 Giovanni Andrea Cornia For the last quarter of the twentieth century, Latin America suffered from low growth, rising inequality, and...
Blog
Experimentation and Co-ordination as Industrial Policy: Examples from Ethiopia and ChileMulu Gebreeyesus and Michiko Iizuka Industrial policy can be defined as the policies that stimulate specific economic activities and promote...
Working Paper
Country Study 1 - GhanaSet against a background of almost continuous economic decline since independence in 1957, the stabilization and adjustment programme pursued by Ghana since 1982-83 is a qualified but also a considerable success. Certainly it has achieved...
Working Paper
Stabilization and adjustment policies and programmes - Country Study 10:ChileTwo factors make the Chilean experience of stabilization policies interesting. One is that probably no other government in Latin America (and perhaps also elsewhere) has been more diligent in pursuing liberal economic policies than the one which took...
Working Paper
Country Study 8Peru ran out of cash in July 1984; a year later President Garcia rejected an IMF agreement and limited debt service payments to 10 per cent of export earnings; and in mid-1986 the President said that Peru would pay 'when it chose and when it could1...
Working Paper
Country Study 7By the time Mexico declared a suspension of debt service payments in August 1982, it had already begun a process of external adjustment that was to prove in the short run outstandingly successful compared with that of other countries, but was based...
Working Paper
Country Study 5Turkey is not the shining example of successful adjustment that it is often made out to be. The stabilization and adjustment policies followed since 1980 have actually undermined the structure of its economic development without correcting its...
Working Paper
Stabilization and adjustment policies and programmes - Country Study 12: the PhilippinesFrom 1984 until its fall in February 1986 the Marcos government attempted to implement a standard IMF-type stabilization and adjustment programme. In some respects the programme was startlingly successful: inflation was brought under control and the...
Working Paper
Country Study 14The Republic of Korea's growth rate averaged nearly 6 per cent in 1981-85, jumping to 10-12 per cent a year in 1986-87. Inflation was cut from 26 per cent in 1980 to around 3 per cent in mid-1987.The author of the following monograph, Dr Alice Amsden...
Blog
WIDER Annual Lecture 18: Managing Structural Transformation
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson At the UN headquarters in New York on 18 November 2014, Peter Timmer, emeritus professor from Harvard, showed how...
Blog
Transforming Economic Structures in Africa – An Interview with Margaret McMillan
25 June 2014In this interview Dr Margaret McMillan outlined the theory of structural transformation, which analyzes the underlying structure of the...
Blog
Rising Inequality – How to Reverse It?30 October 2014 Dominik Etienne and Annett Victorero The last decade has witnessed a revival of concern over the impact of high-income concentration...
Blog
New Structural Economics – An Interview with Justin Lin
27 August 2014 In this interview Justin Lin, Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, talks about how the state can enable the process of...
Blog
Learning to Compete: Lessons from Vietnam – An Interview with Carol Newman
28 May 2014 In this interview Carol Newman discusses the success of the Vietnamese economic transformation and lessons which can be drawn for Africa...
Blog
Celebrating 30 years of research for development
The celebration of the 30th Anniversary of UNU-WIDER presented the ideal opportunity to look back, take stock, and plan ahead. Where else can a group...
Blog
UNU-WIDER: More Needed Than Ever
24 September 2009 Finn Tarp, New Director at UN University-WIDER* ‘Some of us believe in analysing, some of us believe in humanising’ - Donovan...
Working Paper
How Can Korea be a Role Model for Catch-up Development?There is some scepticism about Korea as role model of development as the Korean model involved a considerable degree of state activism, unacceptable in today’s global environment. This paper propose a ‘capability-based view’ of the country’s catch-up...
Working Paper
The Czech TransitionWe examine the case of the Czech Republic, which has been frequently cited as one of the most successful cases of transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Despite the costs related to the break-up of Czechoslovakia in late 1992 and...
Working Paper
Lessons from the Transition EconomiesWhy many transition economies succeeded by pursuing policies that are so different from the radical economic liberalization (shock therapy) that is normally credited for the economic success of central European countries? First, optimal policies are...
Blog
The Triple Crisis: What Development Prospects for Africa?Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet On May 13 and 14, 2010, UNU-WIDER invited around 200 development economists from all over the world to Helsinki...
Book
Post-Communist ReformIn their earlier report, Reform in Eastern Europe, the WIDER group assessed the main building blocks of a successful transition in Eastern Europe: stabilization, price liberalization, privatization, and restructuring. For the last three years this...
Blog
Bringing together macroeconomic policy actors in Mozambique to reflect on current challenges and future scenarios
On 25 October 2016, the Inclusive Growth in Mozambique project brought together key actors in macroeconomic policy management from the Ministry of...
Working Paper
International Aid to Southern Europe in the Early Post-War PeriodAfter the Second World War, both Greece and Italy experienced a Left-Right political polarization and a reproduction of earlier patterns of political patronage. Both Italy and Greece received international aid, including emergency relief, interim...
Journal Article
Investment Behaviour, Population Structure and Long-term Growth in Eastern Europe and RussiaPart of Journal Special Issue Neglected Key Issues in the Transition Debate
Journal Article
UzbekistanPart of Journal Special Issue Neglected Key Issues in the Transition Debate
Journal Article
Unorthodox Ownership and Governance Structures in East AsiaPart of Journal Special Issue Neglected Key Issues in the Transition Debate
Journal Article
Transition and Long-Term GrowthPart of Journal Special Issue Neglected Key Issues in the Transition Debate
Book
Going GlobalThe transition of the former socialist and otherwise centrally planned economies into the world trading and financial system has become a major concern to both policymakers and social scientists. In this book experts from diverse economies address...
Book Chapter
The Agrarian Question in Mozambique's Transition and ReconstructionPart of Book From Conflict to Recovery in Africa
Blog
UNU-WIDER at 35: Letter from the Director
2020 promised to be a big year for UNU-WIDER, with the celebration of our 35th anniversary, the 45th birthday of UNU, and 75 years of the UN. But as...
Blog
35 years of knowledge for change: Changing IMF orthodoxy (1985-95)
UNU-WIDER was among the first to challenge IMF orthodoxy on macroeconomic stabilization. The 1985-87 project ‘Stabilization and adjustment policies...
Journal Article
Entrepreneurship, Developing Countries, and Development EconomicsPart of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship, Developing Countries and Development Economics
Blog
In appreciation of Giovanni Andrea Cornia
I first met Andrea some 40 years ago, in 1985, when he invited me to a conference at UNICEF in New York on ‘Adjustment with a Human Face’, a highly...
Journal Article
Aid, Economic Reform, and Public Sector Fiscal Behavior in Developing CountriesPart of Journal Special Issue Development Aid
Working Paper
The Agrarian Question in Mozambique's Transition and ReconstructionThe economic policies of transition and reconstruction in Mozambique, like the policies of central planning beforehand, were based on an inappropriate model of the inherited rural economy. Under central planning, the peasantry was looked upon as a...
Journal Article
What Does WTO Membership Kindle in Transition Economies?Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Blog
Economic Elites, Crises, and Austerity in 21st Century Capitalism
24 September 2014 Andrés Solimano The era of neoliberal capitalism starting by the late 1970s and early 1980s promotes free trade, capital mobility...
Blog
What did we Learn at the L2C Conference about Industrial Development and Policy in Africa?
22 August 2013 Roger Williamson Given the high growth rates since 2000 and low labour costs, Africa could develop manufacturing industry, agro...
Book Chapter
Macroeconomic Stabilization and Structural AdjustmentPart of Book The Prevention of Humanitarian Emergencies
Blog
Ghana’s Oil Resources Toward Economic Growth and Human Development
Robert Darko Osei As the country’s oil production shifts into gear, Ghana’s new status as a middle-income country is bound to see a reduction in...
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