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Research Entering the Policy Domain
Carl-Gustav Lindén The research project ReCom-Research and Communication on foreign aid, which is co-ordinated by UNU-WIDER with funding from the...
176 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Policy Brief
Enhancing Development through Policy CoherencePolicy 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...
Blog
The Imperative for Strengthening International Tax Co-operationGUESTAngle John Langmore and Perrin Wilkins When delivering the eighth WIDER Annual Lecture on rethinking growth strategies in 2004 Dani Rodrik...
Working Paper
Multilateral Aid Agencies and Strategic Donor BehaviourThe paper builds on recent empirical evidence on the importance of strategic donor behaviour in aid allocation in order to develop a theoretical model where donor pressure on a recipient for influencing the aid disbursement of a multilateral...
Working Paper
Aid Project Proliferation and Absorptive CapacityMuch public discussion about foreign aid has focused on whether and how to increase its quantity. But recently aid quality has come to the fore, by which is meant the efficiency of the aid delivery process. This paper focuses on one process problem...
Working Paper
Decent Work and the Informal EconomyThe 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...
Working Paper
A Development-focused Allocation of the Special Drawing RightsEfforts 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...
Journal Special Issue
FocusThis 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...
Working Paper
The Provision of Global LiquidityThis paper analyses three major problems of the current international monetary system: the asymmetric-adjustment problem, dependence on the monetary policy of the main reserve-issuing country, and the large demand for self-insurance by developing...
Policy Brief
Governing GlobalizationThis policy brief is intended to outline suggestions and stimulate discussion at a time when the world community is thinking about, and is engaged in, a debate on global governance. The policy brief not only focuses on the reform of existing...
Blog
Foreign Aid: Down but Not Out
Peter Burnell The UN Doha Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development, held late in 2008, reminds us of how far foreign aid has...
Blog
Entrepreneurship, Sovereignty, and Violent Social ConflictJurgen Brauer and Robert Haywood The role of the sovereign state in driving and resolving violent social conflict remains central to studies of peace...
Blog
Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Development: Looking at the MDGs from a Different Angle?
George Mavrotas While recent years have witnessed new interest in the finance–growth nexus, the relationship between domestic resource mobilization...
Policy Brief
New Sources of Development FinanceAs a result of the Five Year Review of the World Summit for Social Development, the UN General Assembly in September 2000 adopted a resolution calling for 'a rigorous analysis of the advantages, disadvantages and other implications of proposals for...
Policy Brief
Sustainability of External Development Financing to Developing CountriesExternal development finance consists of those foreign sources of funds that promote or at least have the potential to promote development in the destination countries if delivered in the appropriate form. This rather broad definition qualifies all...
Working Paper
The Multilateral Aid SystemThe paper assesses the multilateral development financing system in the light of the replenishments of three key funds in 2013. It argues that the replenishments showed strong continuing support for each institution, but identifies challenges...
Working Paper
Multiactor Global FundsMultiactor global funds (MGFs) are emerging as important new mechanisms for the financing of development and other global priorities. MGFs like the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are distinctive because they are administered and...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid ResurgentThis 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...
Working Paper
Conditionality: Facts, Theory and PolicyThree changes in conditionality of loans are proposed in this study, in order to improve the relations between developing country borrowers and international lending agencies, and make the international cooperative effort at development and stability...
Working Paper
A Model of Nutrition, Health and Economic ProductivityThe objective of this paper is to develop a Model that integrates the biologically determined human need for food energy and the economic activity (most) people Bust engage in to be able to eat. The optimal work effort and the optimal body size of...
Working Paper
From GATT to WTO and BeyondThe object of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the international trading system from its inception as GATT in 1947 to its latest incarnation as WTO, comprising the complex array of agreements forming its substance and mandate. The study...
Working Paper
Community and Village-Based Provision of Key Social ServicesThe first part of the paper describes steps which Tanzania took in order to provide key social services to her people. Tanzania made great efforts within the ujamaa socialist system to provide free social services for rural as well as urban people...
Blog
From The Editor's Desk (October 2012)
Tony Addison UNU-WIDER is having a very active and successful autumn. Our climate change and development policy conference at the end of September...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)
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...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (February 2012)
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
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
From the Editor's desk (November 2011)
Tony Addison As we come to the end of November, the snow has yet to arrive in Helsinki. We continue to enjoy clear skies and spectacular sunsets...
Book Chapter
The provision of global liquidity: the global reserve systemPart of Book Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System
Book Chapter
Resolution of balance of payments crises: emergency financing and debt workoutsPart of Book Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System
Blog
Good Governance: Is it about Appearance or Action?
27 May 2013 Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School A growing governance agenda and post-2015 ambitions The governance agenda has grown rapidly in the...
Policy Brief
What is the (New) Deal with Fragile States?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...
Working Paper
Mobilizing International Surpluses for World DevelopmentThe Study Group arrived at the following conclusions and recommendations: 1. Substantial surpluses on current account are likely to prevail for the next several years among many developed countries, and there is a need for their diversification...
Working Paper
Does the WTO Agreement on Agriculture Endanger Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa?The paper examines the state of food security in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), based on an analysis of a selection of indicators of food security and nutritional wellbeing during the period 1990-2002 within the context of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture...
Working Paper
Blind Spots on the Map of Aid AllocationsThe 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...
Working Paper
The International Finance FacilityThe paper discusses the International Finance Facility (IFF), a joint HM Treasury–DFID proposal to increase development aid substantially for the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. The main conclusion of the paper is that the...
Working Paper
International Organizations in Development and Global InequalityInitial models of development debates on how to achieve economic growth have been added to by a focus on social issues such as education and political participation. These debates and discourses about development are shaped by international...
Working Paper
Why Have All Development Strategies Failed in Latin America?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...
Blog
Why we need a World Financial AuthorityButcher shops and banks make an interesting contrast, as the late Cuban-American economist Carlos Diaz-Alejandro pointed out. Both may sell tainted...
Blog
Cancun, the WTO and Developing Countries
by Oliver Morrissey I had the privilege of being interviewed by the Finnish TV news agency when I was in Helsinki for the World Institute for...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2013)
Tony Addison This month saw UNU-WIDER in Stockholm for the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the social sectors’, which took place at Sida on 13 March...
Blog
Aid in the Climate Change Combat
17 April 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén In recent weeks there have been several large gatherings of experts dealing with how to tackle the complex climate...
Blog
The Nordic Contribution to Development
26 March 2014 Tony Addison The Nordic countries have a long-standing commitment to development, and their work in peace-building has taken Nordic...
Journal Article
The Yemen Social Fund for DevelopmentPart of Journal Special Issue Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
Journal Article
The World Bank's Health Projects in Timor-LestePart of Journal Special Issue Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
Research Brief
Gender Sensitivity of World Bank InvestmentsMany World Bank investments include women’s concerns only superficially. Lack of attention to gender roles negatively impacts women’s rights. The Bank’s continued promotion of user fees in sexual and reproductive health projects prevents poor women...
Working Paper
Aid, Social Policy, and DevelopmentThis paper discusses past and current social policy strategies in the international aid architecture. From the 1990s, aid strategy and policy shifted to put a stronger emphasis on human development. This accelerated with the Millennium Development...
Research Brief
Barriers to Effective Civil Service Reform in Developing CountriesThe civil service is the backbone of the state, and can either support or undermine a country’s entire system of governance. Donor’s recognize this important fact and have often tried to promote civil service reform in the countries they are...
Research Brief
Barriers to Effective Development Assistance for HealthThe most successful projects and programmes are those that give local partners real ownership over the development process. Aid to health is not always allocated to the areas where it is most needed. Aid fragmentation creates extra costs for...
Blog
Economic Lessons from Recent Research for Achieving SDG8
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid and Sustainable ForestryForeign aid can contribute to sustainable forestry in many ways. The goal is to secure forest benefits of the future, without compromising the needs of the present generations. This paper elaborates on forestry aid as it has evolved in the past...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid and the Failure of State Building in Haiti Under the Duvaliers, Aristide, Préval, and MartellyAfter receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly...
Working Paper
A Review of External Assistance and Aid Effectiveness for Maternal and Child HealthThis paper primarily focuses on how global funding has supported interventions that have proven to be successful in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality around the world. The growth rate of development assistance targeted towards these...
Working Paper
Assessing the Effectiveness of World Bank InvestmentsToday it is widely acknowledged that increasing the gender sensitivity of development aid increases its effectiveness. This report evaluates the extent to which the World Bank integrates gender concerns into its policies and investments, pointing out...
Working Paper
Civil Service ReformCivil service reform is one of the most intractable yet important challenges for governments and their supporters today. However, civil service reform thus far has largely failed. Based on a review of existing literature, this paper presents...
Working Paper
Aid Effectiveness in the Health SectorThis paper explores the current evidence underlying the debate on aid effectiveness, with a specific focus on the health sector. It summarizes the history of aid and outlines the methodological challenges encountered when assessing its effectiveness...
Working Paper
Does Aid Availability Affect Effectiveness in Reducing Poverty?This paper addresses the issue of the impact of aid supply on aid effectiveness. We proceed in two steps. First, we review research works that deal with the problem of governance in donor-recipient relationships and are susceptible of highlighting...
Working Paper
Aid, Growth, and JobsVarious development objectives are worthy, but to my mind, one objective dominates all others: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. In this paper, I focus on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty...
Working Paper
Rethinking the World of Aid in the Twenty First CenturyMany concerns can be raised about the effectiveness of current aid programmes to developing countries. The appropriateness of aid is particularly questionable when one considers the likely character of the challenges that the global economy will...
Working Paper
Resolution of balance of payments crisesThis paper analyses the history and effectiveness of the two major mechanisms of resolution of balance of payments crisis. It argues that IMF lending has met its counter-cyclical objectives through history and has been improving in terms of providing...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (January 2015)
We are now into 2015, and the year is already gathering speed. 2015 is of course the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and a major year in...
Journal Article
Employment Effects of Multilateral Development Bank SupportPart of Journal Special Issue Aid and Employment
Blog
'La tè tranble nan peyi d'Ayiti': The Earth Trembles in Haiti
Evans Jadotte On Tuesday January 12 2010, a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake, off the coast of Haiti destroyed its capital Port-au-Prince. It also razed...
Book Chapter
Globalization and Appropriate GovernancePart of Book Wider Perspectives on Global Development
Book
Governing GlobalizationIt is now more than fifty years since the United Nations system and the Bretton Woods institutions were created. The world has changed since then, and so have its governance needs in terms of institutions and rules. It is time to think about the...
Journal Article
Arab-related Bilateral and Multilateral Sources of Development FinancePart of Journal Special Issue Development Financing
Working Paper
Education from the Bottom UpThe failure of the Somali state from 1993 to 2012 represents one of the world’s most profound and prolonged cases of state collapse. Initially, education and other government services came to a standstill. With the halt of fighting in some areas...
Journal Article
Impact of Liberalization on Key Markets in Sub-Saharan AfricaPart of Journal Special Issue Impact of the Liberalization of the Exchange Rate and Financial Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa
Journal Article
State Failure, State-Building, and Prospects for a “Functional Failed State” in SomaliaPart of Journal Special Issue Aid and Institution-Building in Fragile States
Journal Article
Financing the Provision of Global Public GoodsPart of Journal Special Issue Development Financing
Book Chapter
WTO Negotiation and Accession IssuesPart of Book Globalization, Marginalization and Development
Research Brief
Education Aid – A Way ForwardMost studies show that education aid has a modest but positive effect on enrolment levels. Less is known about the effect of aid on the quality of education. The effectiveness of education aid is to a large degree dependent on the stability of the...
Working Paper
International Organizations and the Future of Education AssistanceEducation began to be included as a component of foreign assistance in the early 1960s as it is a principal ingredient of development. A number of multilateral and bilateral agencies were established around this time to implement various types of aid...
Journal Article
Designing Effective Civil Service Reform Lessons from Past ExperiencePart of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Journal Article
Donor Funding of Multilateral Aid AgenciesPart of Journal Special Issue Development Financing
Working Paper
Arab-Related Bilateral and Multilateral Sources of Development FinanceThis article analyses the organizational structure as well as the characteristics of development finance provided by Arab donor countries. This is done with a comparative view in relation to western donors and with the aim to develop recommendations...
Working Paper
Innovative Sources of Development FinanceThis paper argues that in view of the resource crunch confronting many developing countries and the fall in overseas development aid flows to them, new sources of development finance need to be found. We consider international taxes, fees and levies...
Working Paper
Violence in PeaceA 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...
Working Paper
Prolonged Use and Conditionality FailureSince 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...
Working Paper
International Organizations as a ProfessionThe role of international organizations grows with the acceleration of globalization and the increasing importance of global governance. However, thus far, only limited and rather narrow research has been generated on the subject. It is a state of...
Working Paper
Analysis of the Potential Impact of the Current WTO Agricultural Negotiations on Government Strategies in the SADC RegionThis study aims to help identify how the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) could potentially constrain government action to achieve food security in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The paper considers the proposed tariff and subsidy...
Working Paper
Decentralizing Aid with Interested PartiesThis 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...
Working Paper
Three Decades of Rural Development Projects in Asia, Latin America, and AfricaThis article aims to contribute to the discussion about how to make development interventions more effective by analyzing the factors contributing to the success or failure of rural development projects. We made an aggregate level analysis of 46...
Working Paper
Inequality in Historical PerspectiveAdam Smith, Tom Paine, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx were all bold and outspoken about the injustices of extreme inequality, nationally and internationally. Yet by almost every standard, global inequality has grown substantially since they were...
Working Paper
The Effect of IMF and World Bank Programmes on PovertyStructural adjustment, as measured by the number of adjustment loans from the IMF and World Bank, reduces the growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Growth does reduce poverty, but I find no evidence for a direct effect of structural adjustment on...
Working Paper
Policies to Roll-back the State and Privatize?This paper investigates poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), launched by the International Monetary Fund/World Bank in 1999 as conditions for debt relief and loans. It queries whether PRSPs really represent a shift away from the controversial...
Working Paper
WTO Negotiation and Accession Issues for Vulnerable EconomiesThe paper discusses the costs and benefits to be expected by least-developed and low-income (‘vulnerable’) economies if they accede to the WTO, the impact of current debates about WTO reform on vulnerable economies, and measures to make it easier for...
Working Paper
Botswana and ZimbabweBotswana and Zimbabwe represent two cases of differential access to the world economy. Notwithstanding its lack of diversification and its reliance on a primary mineral export, Botswana has prospered while Zimbabwe has fallen into a deep crisis...
Working Paper
Non-state Sovereign Entrepreneurs and Non-territorial Sovereign OrganizationsWe propose two new concepts, of non-state sovereign entrepreneurs and the non-territorial sovereign organizations they form, and relate them to issues pertaining to state sovereignty, governance failures, and violent social conflict over the...
Working Paper
The United Nations SystemThis 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...
Book Chapter
The International Finance Facility ProposalPart of Book New Sources of Development Finance
Book Chapter
A Development-Focused Allocation of the Special Drawing RightsPart of Book New Sources of Development Finance
Journal Article
Aid, Economic Reform, and Public Sector Fiscal Behavior in Developing CountriesPart of Journal Special Issue Development Aid
Working Paper
Financing the Provision of Global Public GoodsThis paper examines the concept of global public goods (GPGs) and in that context explores the extent of aid (ODA) presently being diverted to GPG provision and whether such diversion skews aid-flows towards some recipients and whether diverting aid...
Working Paper
The HIPC Debt Relief InitiativeSince the mid-1980s Uganda has had debt strategies, which clearly laid down procedures for negotiating new loans and emphasized commitment to reduce the stock of debt arrears. Over this period, the country went through six Paris Club negotiations and...
Working Paper
Bilateral Official Finance for Private Sector Development and the Role of Non-Government OrganizationsThe study examines the official bilateral donors’ current aid practice for private sector development (PSD). In particular, it reviews the donors’ major instruments and channels for aid delivery and the extent to which official flows have catalytic...
Working Paper
Institutional Reforms and the Role of Multilateral Aid AgenciesThis paper reviews the role of the multilateral aid agencies in the delivery of aid. The role of these institutions is as old as the debate on the role of aid in economic development. Aid is effective in a good policy environment. However, effective...
Working Paper
The Instability of the Emerging Market Assets Demand ScheduleThis paper addresses the nature of the demand schedule for emerging market assets in both its macroeconomic and microeconomic dimensions. The former is usually analysed in terms of the ‘push factors’ (such as interest rates or contagion) determining...
Working Paper
Donor Funding of Multilateral Aid AgenciesThe paper reports an empirical study of the factors affecting burden sharing among OECD’s 22 DAC members in ‘bankrolling’ the multilateral aid agencies. These are the UN agencies, World Bank’s IDA and non-IDA programmes, regional development banks...
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