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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...
76 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)
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...
Book Chapter
Slow Progress in Growth and Poverty Reduction in CameroonPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (April 2012)
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...
Blog
China and India’s Development Strategies: Lessons for Developing CountriesAmelia U. Santos-Paulino and Guanghua Wan China and India have become global economic powers. Even at the market exchange rate, China overtook Japan...
Journal Article
Disadvantage and discrimination in self-employment
– Caste gaps in earnings in Indian small businesses
Using the 2004–2005 India Human Development Survey data, we estimate and decompose the earnings of household businesses owned by historically marginalized social groups known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs) and non-SCSTs across the earnings...
Journal Article
Poverty Mapping Based on First-Order Dominance with an Example from MozambiqueWe explore a novel first-order dominance (FOD) approach to poverty mapping and compare its properties to small-area estimation. The FOD approach uses census data directly, is straightforward to implement, is multidimensional allowing for a broad...
Working Paper
South African Labour Market Transitions During the Global Financial and Economic Crisis
– Micro-Level Evidence
This paper studies individual-level labour market transitions and their determinants in South Africa during the zenith and aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis using 2008 to 2010-2011 panel data from the National Income Dynamics...
Working Paper
The Rise of a Middle Class in East and Southern Africa
– Implications for Food System Transformation
We examine the implications of the rise of a middle class in East and Southern Africa for food consumption patterns and the food system. A unique classification of food items shows that highly processed food has one-third of the purchased food market...
Working Paper
Connections and the Allocation of Public BenefitsWe explore the relationship between connections and public transfers in decentralized poverty-targeting programmes. Using panel data from Vietnam we find evidence that households with connections to local government are more likely to be classified...
Working Paper
Multidimensional Poverty in Nigeria
– First Order Dominance Approach
This study appraises non-monetary multidimensional poverty in Nigeria using the novel first order dominance approach developed by Arndt et al. (2012). It examines five dimensions of deprivation: education, water, sanitation, shelter, and energy-using...
Working Paper
Behavioral Design
– A New Approach to Development Policy
Successful development programs rely on people to behave and choose in certain ways, and behavioral economics helps us understand why people behave and choose as they do. Approaching problems in development using behavioral economics thus leads to...
Policy Brief
Business and the Barrel of a Gun
– Understanding Entrepreneurship and Violent Conflict in Developing Countries
Although the impacts of violent conflict on investment, production, incomes and inequality have been widely studied on an aggregate level, comparatively less is known about the more diverse impacts of such conflict at the micro (particularly firm)...
Blog
Income generation and malaria in UgandaSeveral 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...
Working Paper
Growth, Poverty, and Inequality
– The Case Study of Cameroon
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the growth performance of the Cameroonian economy from independence in 1960 to date, and then to use this as a background for the analysis of poverty, inequality, and non-monetary outcomes. The analysis of...
Working Paper
Consumption Bundle Aggregation in Poverty Measurement
– Implications for Poverty and its Dynamics in Uganda
Official poverty figures in Uganda are flawed by the fact that the underlying poverty lines are based on a single national food basket that was constructed in the early 1990s. In this paper, we estimate a new set of poverty lines that accounts for...
Working Paper
Poverty, Vulnerability, and Reference Dependent UtilityIn this paper we argue that the recent evidence on individuals’ decision making is of high relevance for the measurement of poverty when switching from a static and certain to a dynamic and uncertain framework. The numerous proposed measures of multi...
Journal Article
Ordinal Welfare Comparisons with Multiple Discrete Indicators
– A First Order Dominance Approach and Application to Child Poverty
We develop an approach for making welfare comparisons between populations with multidimensional discrete well-being indicators observed at the micro level. The approach is rooted in the concept of multidimensional first order dominance. It assumes...
Working Paper
Learning by Exporting
– The Case of Mozambican Manufacturing
In this paper, we aim to analyse the learning by exporting hypothesis in the Mozambican context. Due to the presence of the born-global phenomenon among exporters, we address the endogeneity introduced by self-selection by combining a generalized BO...
Working Paper
Policy Regimes, Inequality, Poverty and Growth
– The Chilean Experience, 1973-2010
Since the 1970s, Chile has exhibited a highly skewed income distribution accompanied with strong fluctuations over time. Although income distribution worsened notably in the 1970s-80s, a significant improvement was recorded in the first half of the...
Working Paper
Agricultural Supply Response and Poverty in MozambiqueThis paper identifies the key causal factors behind farmers’ marketing decisions in Mozambique. A two-step decision making process is modelled. Farmers decide, first, whether or not to participate in the market and, second, how much to market. The...
Working Paper
Disadvantage and Discrimination in Self-employment
– Caste Gaps in Earnings in Indian Small Businesses
Using the 2004-05 India Human Development Survey data, we estimate and decompose the earnings of household businesses owned by historically marginalized social groups known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs), and non-SCSTs across the earnings...
Book Chapter
Vulnerability in Developing Countries
– Implications and Conclusions
Part of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries
Book Chapter
Vulnerability in Developing Countries
– An Introduction
Part of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries
Journal Article
Behavioral Design
– A New Approach to Development Policy
Part of Journal Special Issue Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Working Paper
Economic Transformation and the Diversification of Livelihoods in Rural VietnamDiversification of household activities away from agriculture is a key characteristic of economic development. We examine the extent of diversification among Vietnamese households, from agriculture into waged employment and entrepreneurship and...
Working Paper
Gender Inequality and the Empowerment of Women in Rural VietnamThis paper examines gender inequality and female empowerment in rural Vietnam. Using an extensive panel dataset on 2,181 households, we examine how the welfare of women living in rural areas has evolved during a period of dramatic rural...
Working Paper
Social and political capital in rural VietnamThis paper exploits five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to investigate issues of social and political capital in rural Vietnam. I analyse membership of the Communist Party, ‘mass organizations’ (Farmers’ Union...
Working Paper
Land issues in Vietnam 2006–14
– Markets, property rights, and investment
This paper uses five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to analyse land issues in Vietnam from a number of different angles. The VARHS provides panel data at plot as well as household level and I use this rich data set...
Working Paper
Social Service Delivery and Access to Financial Innovation
– The Impact of Oportunidades’ Electronic Payment System in Mexico
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Oportunidades programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via a bank account is found to have...
Journal Article
Rent Seeking and Government Ownership of Firms
– An Application to China's Township–Village Enterprises
Part of Journal Special Issue WIDER Symposium on Adaptive Efficiency and Evolving Diversity of Enterprise Ownership and Governance
Working Paper
Poverty mapping based on first order dominance with an example from MozambiqueWe explore a novel first order dominance (FOD) approach to poverty mapping and compare its properties to small area estimation. The FOD approach uses census data directly; is straightforward to implement; is multidimensional allowing for a broad...
Working Paper
The Czech Transition
– The Importance of Microeconomic Fundamentals
We 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
Labour and migration in rural VietnamThis paper provides an overview of the characteristics of migrant households and analyses the effects of migration in Vietnam, on the basis of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey conducted in 2012 and 2014. The data reveal significant...
Working Paper
Commercialization in agriculture in rural Vietnam, 2006-14The vast majority of households in rural Vietnam undertake agricultural activities and for many this is their main livelihood. Moreover, this agriculture has become increasingly commercialized over time. This paper uses the five wave VARHS balanced...
Working Paper
Comparing the development of agricultural technology and information technology in rural VietnamThis paper presents a descriptive analysis on the ownership of different types of technology—both agricultural machinery and information technology—within households in rural areas of Vietnam. We find that there has been little development in the...
Working Paper
Income and malaria
– Evidence from an agricultural intervention in Uganda
We exploit a spatial discontinuity in the coverage of an agricultural extension program in Uganda to causally identify its effects on malaria. We find that eligibility for the program reduced the incidence of malaria by 8.8 percentage points, with...
Research Brief
The Microeconomic Impact of Interventions Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and MalariaWhile the majority of interventions against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria had positive short-term effects, these were frequently not translated into long-term sustainable results. Cash transfers may have the potential of reducing HIV...
Book Chapter
Economic Performance in Transitional Economies
– The Role of Ownership, Incentives, and Restructuring
Part of Book Transition and Institutions
Book Chapter
Opening the Convergence Black Box
– Measurement Problems and Demographic Aspects
Part of Book Spatial Inequality and Development
Working Paper
Microsimulation of impacts of tax and transfer in Vietnam
– Feasibility study
This paper assesses the feasibility of simulating the distributional impacts produced by various tax and transfer instruments in Vietnam. Vietnam’s system of tax and transfer policies underwent frequent changes, in terms of diversity and adjustment...
Book
Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in VietnamMicro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Vietnam provides a comprehensive analytic contribution to a crucial topic within development economics. Based on fifteen years of continued data collection and research efforts it brings together nine up-to...
Working Paper
Transfers and Development
– Easy Come, Easy Go?
Contrary to the popular notion that money that is easily earned, is also easily spent, economic theory holds that income is fungible. Drawing on the concept of mental accounting, this study theoretically explores when such a link between spending...
Working Paper
From the Grabbing Hand to the Helping Hand
– A Rent Seeking Model of China’s Township-Village Enterprises
I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical...
Working Paper
Civil Society, Institutional Change and the Politics of Reform
– The Great Transition
This paper examines the relationship between differences in civil society development under communism and the political, economic and institutional change and transformation after 1989. We collected a unique dataset on nature and intensity of...
Journal Article
Improving Financial Inclusion through the Delivery of Cash Transfer Programmes
– The Case of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera Programme
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via savings...
Working Paper
Opening the Convergence Black Box
– Measurement Problems and Demographic Aspects
In this paper we address the issues involved with the use of microeconomic data, that is, household surveys, to compare the patterns of income growth among different regions instead of the commonly used aggregate data. In particular, we investigate...
Journal Article
Agricultural extension, intra-household allocation and malariaCan 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...
Working Paper
The Determinants of Economic Performance in Transitional Economies
– the Roles of Ownership, Incentives and Restructuring
This paper reviews empirical evidence for key matters concerning new patterns of corporate governance and the determinants of economic performance in transitional economies. Many findings reported draw on new and unusual data for large samples of...
Working Paper
Assessing Poverty and Inequality at a Detailed Regional Level
– New Advances in Spatial Microsimulation
During the past three years NATSEM has developed pathbreaking spatial microsimulation techniques, involving the creation of synthetic data about the socioeconomic characteristics of households at a detailed regional level. The data are potentially...
Working Paper
Ordinal Welfare Comparisons with Multiple Discrete Indicators
– A First Order Dominance Approach and Application to Child Poverty
We develop an approach for making welfare comparisons between populations with multidimensional discrete well-being indicators observed at the micro level. The approach is rooted in the concept of multidimensional first order dominance. It assumes...
Working Paper
Blooming Together or Wilting Alone?
– Network Externalities and Mondragón and La Lega Co-Operative Networks
This paper examines strategies developed by Mondragón Co-operative Corporation in the Basque Region of Spain, and La Lega co-operative network in Italy, to mitigate disadvantages of the typical co-operative organizational structure and market...
Book Chapter
Poverty and its Dynamics in Uganda
– Explorations using a New Set of Poverty Lines
Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Book Chapter
Spatial and Temporal Multidimensional Poverty in NigeriaPart of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Book Chapter
Assessing Poverty and Inequality at a Detailed Regional Level
– New Advances in Spatial Microsimulation
Part of Book Understanding Human Well-being
Working Paper
Spatial and Temporal Analyses of Women’s Wellbeing in the Democratic Republic of the CongoThis paper sets out to investigate the wellbeing of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It undertakes spatial and temporal comparisons of women’s wellbeing using data from the Demographic and Health Survey and the Multiple Indicator...
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