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UNU-WIDER at 40: The power of shared knowledge

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Enhancing Resilience – LDC Future Forum

Innovative Solutions for Strengthening LDCs Resilience against Systemic Shocks, 1-3 April 2025, Lusaka, Zambia

Safeguarding tomorrow – innovative approaches to growth and equity

WIDER Development Conference, 9-11 June 2025, in Helsinki, Finland

New book lays out path for green growth from extractive industry in low-income countries

UNU-WIDER and ATI launch innovative Tax Gap Toolkit

267 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...

Blog

From The Editor's Desk (October 2012)

by Tony Addison 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 (January 2012)

by Tony Addison 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...

Blog

The View from Buenos Aires

by Tony Addison September 2011

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

The Brazilian regional development funds and economic growth

– A spatial panel approach

The regional development policy in Brazil materializes mainly in the regional development funds for the north-east (FNE), the north (FNO), and the centre-west (FCO), in which more than EUR36 billion was invested between 2004 and 2010. This paper...

Book Chapter

Regional Cooperation and Peace

– A Chinese View

Part of Book The New Regionalism and the Future of Security and Development

Blog

Youth Employment: A Key Issue

by Carl-Gustav Lindén January 2013

Economist Imed Drine recently left UNU-WIDER and headed with his family for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to take up a new position as a senior economist with...

Policy Brief

Rising Spatial Disparities and Development

The UNU-WIDER project on 'Spatial Disparities in Human Development' has collected and analyzed evidence on the extent of spatial inequalities within developing countries. The studies find that spatial inequalities are high, with disparities between...

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

Regulatory Reform for Closing Africa’s Competitiveness Gap

Over the past decade, Africa has been experiencing an economic resurgence. Yet, the continent is facing several difficult challenges and many economies of the region continue to be among the least competitive in the world. Africa’s competitiveness is...

Journal Special Issue

Spatial Issues in Africa

Many developing and transition countries have considerable regional variation in average household income, poverty, and in health and educational status. National human development indicators can therefore mislead policy-makers when large regional...

The clustering of industries in specific areas has improved industrial productivity in a number of countries. Since the mid-1990s in Tunisia, concerted policies have been introduced which focus on improving the efficiency of the labour force, and...

Journal Special Issue

Symposium on Spatial Inequality in Latin America

Journal Special Issue

Inequality and Poverty in China

Getting an accurate picture of poverty and inequality trends and patterns in the world’s most populous country is central to understanding changes in global inequality and poverty – these alter significantly when China is included or excluded. China...

Journal Special Issue

African Development in an Urban World

– Beyond the Tipping Point

In 2007 the number of urban inhabitants will surpass rural dwellers as a percentage of the total world population. By 2030 the proportion of people living in cities globally is expected to reach 61%, with almost 80% of urban dwellers living in less...

Regional economics

Journal Special Issue

South-South and North-South Trade Agreements

– Compatibility Issues

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...

Working Paper

Social Transfers and Growth

– The Missing Evidence from Luminosity Data

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...

Working Paper

Regional Integration in Africa

– Challenges and Prospects

Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa...

Policy Brief

The Global Economic Crisis After One Year

– Is a New Paradigm for Recovery in Developing Countries Emerging?

One year into the global economic crisis, it has become clear that the paradigm for international development has changed irrevocably. With leadership, moral authority and the capacity of the West in international development diminishing, developing...

Policy Brief

Policy Responses to the Global Economic Crisis in Africa

Africa is the developing region most at risk from the global economic crisis. Its recent strong growth has been interrupted. Already home to the largest number of low-income countries in the world, the region is now likely to experience higher...

Policy Brief

Achieving Development Success

– Strategies and Lessons from the Developing World

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...

Working Paper

The New Regionalism

– Implications for Global development and International Security

Working Paper

Conflict and Peace-building in Africa

– The Regional Dimensions

Contemporary Africa reveals a range of causes, consequences and responses to conflicts which are increasingly interrelated as well as regional in character, as around the Great Lakes/Horn. Their economic and non-state features are undeniable, leading...

Working Paper

The Practice of Industrial Policy – Lessons for Africa

– Case Studies of Decentralized Co-ordination in China

This paper draws on both successful and failing cases of industrialization in China to analyse the role of local governments in fostering the growth of light manufacturing. The broad spectrum of support types and the intimate knowledge of enterprise...

Working Paper

The Centre Cannot Hold

– Patterns of Polarization in Nigeria

Our hypothesis is that Nigeria is going through a process of economic polarization. An analysis of this type is new for Nigeria; the limited availability of comparable data has hindered an investigation that requires data series not too close in time...

Working Paper

Regionalization in Southern Africa

This state of the art paper reviews literature published up to the end of 1994 on economic, security and environmental regionalization in southern Africa. In the field of economic regionalization a distinction is made between three main integration...

Working Paper

Habitat II and the Urban Economy

– A Review of Recent Developments and Literature

The strategic conferences organized by the UN during the past 25 years have focused on assisting and mobilizing governments and other relevant actors of international life by enhancing collective thinking and action in those areas which may...

Working Paper

Utility-Consistent Poverty in Madagascar, 2001-10

– Snapshots in the Presence of Multiple Economy-Wide Shocks

We use Arndt and Simler’s (2010) utility-consistent approach to calculating poverty lines to analyse poverty in Madagascar in 2001, 2005 and 2010. Because two major political crises occurred between the survey periods, the snapshots of national...

Working Paper

Utility-Consistent Poverty in Ethiopia, 2000–11

– Welfare Improvements in a Changing Economic Landscape

We use Arndt and Simler’s utility-consistent approach to calculating poverty lines to analyse poverty in Ethiopia in 2000, 2005, and 2011. Poverty reduction was steady but uneven, with gains greatest in urban areas in the first half of the decade...

Working Paper

Disentangling the Pattern of Geographic Concentration in Tunisian Manufacturing Industries

In this paper, we examine the pattern of spatial concentration of manufacturing industries observed in Tunisia and explore the factors driving firms’ choices of location at the provincial level. We consider specialization and competition indicators...

Working Paper

The Political Economy of the Peace Process in a Changing Middle East

Working Paper

The (Declining) Role of Households in Sustaining China's Economy

– Structural Path Analysis for 1997-2007

Current explanations for private consumption’s diminished role in China focus on the expansion of exports and investments. Using structural path analysis, we find additional contributing factors. First, growth patterns during 1997-2007 favoured...

Video

Regional Integration and the Role of Supermarkets - an interview with Reena das Nair

In this interview, Reena das Nair of the Centre for Competition, Regulation and Economic Development (CCRED) provides information about research on supermarket value chains in Southern Africa. The focus is on supermarket chains from South Africa and...

Video

Regional Growth and Development in Southern Africa project - an interview with Channing Arndt

Channing Arndt, Senior Research Fellow of UNU-WIDER, outlines the main research areas for this project on economic growth in the Southern African region. The project has two main elements – one specifically on the South African economy; the second on...

News

Call for Papers - Regional Industrialization and Integration

The TIPS Annual Forum will be held in Johannesburg on 14-15 July 2015.

Blog

Spatial Inequality and Development

by Anthony J. Venables 2003

by Anthony L. Venables Economic activity is distributed extremely unevenly across space. At the international level there are rich countries and poor...

Journal Article

Measuring the Vulnerability of Subnational Regions in South Africa

Part of Journal Special Issue Vulnerability in Development

Book Chapter

Assets, Poverty Dynamics and Vulnerability

– Evidence from Rural Tajikistan

Part of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries

Journal Article

Foreign Direct Investment and Regional Inequality in China

Part of Journal Special Issue FDI, Employment, and Growth in China and India

Working Paper

Night lights and regional income inequality in Africa

Estimating regional income inequality in Africa has been challenging due to the lack of reliable and consistent sub-national income data. I employ night lights data to circumvent this limitation. I find significant and positive associations between...