Book Chapter

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

• Conflict management
• Regional economics
• Regional planning

Blog

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...

• Quantitative research methodology
• Infrastructure (Economics)
• Institutional economics

Working Paper

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...

• Economic growth
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper proposes a semi-parametric method for poverty decomposition, which combines the data-generating procedure of Shorrocks and Wan (2004) with the Shapley value framework of Shorrocks (1999). Compared with the popular method of Datt and...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Poverty
• Regional economics

Working Paper

African regional organizations’ increasing activity in security policy is usually approached through the concept of a ‘security community’, which can only partially clarify their difficult situation. A multilevel governance model is suggested as a...

• International economic relations
• Regional economics
• International security

Working Paper

One account of spatial concentration focuses on productivity advantages arising from market size. We investigate this for 40 regions of Japan. Our results identify important effects of a region’s own size, as well as cost linkages between producers...

• Gross national product
• Productivity
• Regional economics

Working Paper

Using a CGE model, PRCGEM, with an updated 2002 I/O table, this paper explores how earnings will be affected in each of 40 separate industries across 31 regions (or 8 regional blocks) of China for the period 2002–07. Labour movement between regions...

• Equality and inequality
• Labour market
• Regional economics

Working Paper

China’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-regional income inequality in China. This paper discusses...

• Equality and inequality
• Globalization
• Income

Working Paper

Using new household survey data for 1995 and 2002, we investigate the size of China’s urban-rural income gap, the gap’s contribution to overall inequality in China, and the factors underlying the gap. Our analysis improves on past estimates by using...

• Equality and inequality
• Households
• Income

Working Paper

There are two main types of data sources of income distributions in China: household survey data and grouped data. Household survey data are typically available for isolated years and individual provinces. In comparison, aggregate or grouped data are...

• Distribution
• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution

Working Paper

This paper explores the forces that shaped China’s interprovincial inequality in the last five decades of communist rule. In so far as the change in interprovincial inequality is the result of differential growth in the provincial GDP per capita and...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Production (Economic theory)

Working Paper

This paper examines the impact of income risk on the level of well-being of rural households in Nigeria. While income risk is defined as the risks associated with variability in income well-being is defined in terms of the level of utility reached by...

• Agriculture
• Income
• Quality of life

Working Paper

This paper analyses regional data on inequality and poverty in Russia during 1994-2000 using published series from the regionally representative Household Budget Survey. The paper finds that the share of inequality in Russia coming from the between...

• Equality and inequality
• Convergence
• Poverty

Working Paper

China’s recent accession to the WTO is expected to accelerate its integration into the world economy, which aggravates concerns over the impact of globalization on the already rising inter-region income inequality in China. This paper discusses China...

• Econometric models
• Equality and inequality
• Globalization

Working Paper

This paper discusses the development of Korean communities in Japan from their origins in the late nineteenth century through their stabilization following the Second World War. Approaching the developing communities from a spatial perspective, the...

• Discrimination in employment
• Emigration and immigration
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper reports levels of income inequality and poverty in four Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. Unlike many previous researchers who examine transition economies, we aggregate the detailed...

• Equality and inequality
• Households
• Income distribution

Working Paper

Models of economic geography predict that transportation costs directly affect demand for goods and the supply of intermediate inputs. One of the reasons that international trade is concentrated in the coastal provinces of China is that they have...

• International trade
• Regional economics
• Transportation cost

Working Paper

The paper analyses the impact trade liberalization and economic integration have had on regional growth and regional disparities in Mexico over the last two decades. It is highlighted that the passage from an import substitution system to membership...

• Economic integration
• Labour
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper uses six nationally representative household consumption surveys to develop successive poverty profiles for Indonesia over a fifteen-year period of sustained high growth followed by rapid contraction. Adopting a ‘cost-of-basic-needs’...

• Equality and inequality
• Household survey
• Poverty

Working Paper

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...

• Household survey
• Income
• Convergence

Working Paper

Accurate regional estimates of output are desired as an indicator of level of development and as a variable used to explain internal migration, demand patterns, fertility and other aspects of behaviour. This chapter explores one often neglected...

• Economic development
• Income distribution
• Internal migration

Working Paper

Based on a statistical procedure that combines household survey data with population census data, this paper presents estimates of inequality for three developing countries at a level of disaggregation far below that allowed by household surveys...

• Equality and inequality
• Household survey
• Regional economics

Working Paper

Over the last decade, India has been one of the fastest growing economies, and has experienced considerable decline in overall income poverty. However, in a vast country like India, poverty levels vary significantly across the different states. In...

• Economic development
• Income distribution
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

Two precisely comparable national household surveys relating to 1988 and 1995 are used to analyse changes in the inequality of income in urban China. Over those seven years province mean income per capita grew rapidly but diverged across provinces...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

A considerable literature exists on the measurement of income inequality in China and its increasing trend. Much less is known, however, about the driving forces of this trend and their quantitative contributions. Conventional decompositions, by...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper constructs and analyses a long-run time-series for regional inequality in China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late...

• Central planning
• Communist
• Equality and inequality

Working Paper

We argue that spatial inequality of industry location is a primary cause of spatial income inequality in developing nations. We focus on understanding the process of spatial industrial variation—identifying the spatial factors that have cost...

• Equality and inequality
• Industrial policy
• Industrial productivity

Working Paper

International narratives on Argentina’s recovery from the crisis of 2001-02 tend to emphasize the role of rising commodity prices and growing demand from China. Argentina is said to have been ‘lucky’, saved by global demand for its agricultural...

• Agriculture
• Depressions
• Economic development

Working Paper

South Africa is characterized by significant inequality in spatial economic activity. Whether future growth and development on a subnational level in South Africa will be such as to reduce this inequality may depend on the economic growth and...

• Economic development
• Regional economics
• Regional planning

Working Paper

This paper investigates the relationship between criminal activity and geographical isolation. Using data from Madagascar, we show that, after we control for population composition and risk factors, crime increases with distance from urban centers...

• Conflict management
• Justice, Administration of
• Regional economics

Working Paper

In this paper we examine the relative importance of rural versus urban areas in terms of monetary poverty and seven other related living standards indicators. We present the levels of urban-rural differences for several African countries for which we...

• Income distribution
• Regional economics
• Rural development

Working Paper

This paper considers lessons from the practice of fiscal federalism for guidance on new approaches to development finance. Despite the fact that inter-regional redistribution in a federation relies on a central government with strong fiscal powers...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Fiscal policy
• Regional economics

Working Paper

Absolute poverty lines are often derived from the cost of obtaining sufficient calories. Where staples vary across regions, such poverty lines may differ depending on whether they are set using national or regional food baskets. Regional poverty...

• Equality and inequality
• Income
• Poverty

Working Paper

This paper reviews the theory and application of decomposition techniques in the context of spatial inequality. It establishes some new theoretical results with potentially wide applicability, and examines empirical evidence drawn from a large number...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Index numbers (Economics)

Working Paper

In this paper, we use the new economic geography (NEG) framework to estimate the extent to which spatial wage disparities in the South African manufacturing sector are an outcome of economic forces such as market access. To test the relationship, we...

• Wage differentials
• Spatial econometrics
• Regional economics

Journal Special Issue

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...

• Human capital
• Poverty
• Regional economics

Journal Special Issue

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...

• Equality and inequality
• Poverty measurement
• Poverty

Journal Special Issue

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...

• Equality and inequality
• Human capital
• Poverty

Research Brief

​​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...

• Industrial productivity
• Infrastructure (Economics)
• Regional economics

Journal Special Issue

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...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Regional economics

Journal Special Issue

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...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Poverty

Journal Special Issue

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

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...

• Commercial policy
• Economic development
• Economic integration

Working Paper

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...

• Economic development
• Government policy (Poor)
• Public welfare

Policy Brief

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...

• Equality and inequality
• Globalization
• Regional economics

Working Paper

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...

• Economic conditions
• Industrial policy
• Industrialization

Working Paper

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...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

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...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty

Working Paper

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...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty

Working Paper

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...

• Competition
• Industrial management
• Manufacturing industries

Working Paper

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...

• Agriculture
• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Microeconomics

Working Paper

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...

• Competition
• Industrial policy
• International economic relations

Working Paper

The Maoist insurgency in Nepal is one of the highest intensity internal conflicts in recent times. Investigation into the causes of the conflict would suggest that grievance rather than greed is the main motivating force. The concept of horizontal or...

• Equality and inequality
• Insurgency
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper examines the impact of changes in poverty and public health spending on inter-temporal variations in longevity using a unique regional-level dataset that covers 77 regions of Russia over the period 1994-2000. The dynamic panel data model...

• Healthcare
• Life expectancy
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

This paper focuses on inequality in living standards across oblasts and regions within Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Regional inequality is an important area of research and policy development. Inequality...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Regional economics

Working Paper

The purpose of this paper is to establish some basic facts about income inequality in the Philippines, with a special focus on the importance of spatial income inequality. Despite major fluctuations in macroeconomic performances, income inequality...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution

Working Paper

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...

• Simulation methods (Economics)
• Equality and inequality
• Microeconomics

Book Chapter

From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.

• Commerce
• Economies of scale
• International economic relations

Book Chapter

From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.

• Competition
• Industrial policy
• International economic relations

Blog

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...

• Economic development
• Elite (Social sciences)
• Equality and inequality

Blog

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...

• Commercial policy
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic development

Blog

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...

• Agriculture
• Depressions
• Economic development

Working Paper

• Economic development
• Regional economics
• Social conflict

Working Paper

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...

• Economic development
• International economic relations
• Regional economics

Working Paper

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...

• Housing
• Regional economics
• Regional planning

Working Paper

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...

• Commerce
• Economies of scale
• International economic relations

Policy Brief

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...

• Economic growth
• Financial crisis
• Regional economics

Policy Brief

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...

• Financial crisis
• Macroeconomics
• Primary commodities

Policy Brief

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...

• Economic development
• Regional economics

Working Paper

• Economic development
• Economic integration
• Globalization

Working Paper

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...

• National security
• Regional economics
• Social conflict

Journal Article

Traditional development models focus on the sector rather than location of growth. Advocates of agriculture-led strategies emphasise agriculture's strong growth linkages and potential to raise rural incomes. The new economic geography literature...

• Agriculture
• Economic growth
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between exports, and in particular export diversity, and regional growth in a developing country context. Using export data for 19 sectors from 354 subnational (magisterial) districts of...

• Economic development
• Foreign investments
• Regional economics

Working Paper

Deepening financial development and rapid economic growth in China have been accompanied by widening income disparity between the coastal and inland regions. In this paper, by employing panel dataset for 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1990...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution

Working Paper

The purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence process in China by taking into account the spatial interaction between factors. The paper shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the spatial dependence of China’s per capita GDP in...

• Economic development
• Income distribution
• Regional economics

Working Paper

For the Central Asian countries the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to economic disintegration as old coordination mechanisms disappeared and new national borders appeared. This paper analyses why it has been difficult to coordinate aid for...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic integration
• International trade

Working Paper

In Peru, a country with an astonishing variety of different ecological areas, with 84 different climate zones and landscapes, with rainforests, high mountain ranges and dry deserts, the geographical context may not be all that matters, but it could...

• Equality and inequality
• Poverty
• Public welfare

Working Paper

This paper applies a new decomposition technique to the study of variations in poverty across the regions of Russia. The procedure, which is based on the Shapley value in cooperative game theory, allows the deviation in regional poverty levels from...

• Equality and inequality
• Income
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

This paper implements a methodology for estimating poverty in Ecuador, Madagascar and South Africa, at levels of disaggregation that to date have not generally been available. The methodology is based on a statistical procedure to combine household...

• Economic forecasting
• Poverty measurement
• Regional economics

Blog

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...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Regional economics

Book Chapter

Part of Book Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty

Working Paper

This paper reviews the literature on the forces driving urbanization in developing countries. It presents a model outlining how globalization can lead to the evolution of an urban structure which may approximate Zipf’s law. Policy implications are...

• Economic development
• Regional economics
• Regional planning

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Prospects for Renewable Energy in Africa

• Carbon tax
• Climate change
• Regional economics

Working Paper

Over the past two decades, southern African countries have experienced rapid growth in the number and spread of supermarkets. Several factors have been attributed to this growth, including increasing urbanization, increased per capita income, the...

• Regional economics
• Strategic planning
• Supply and demand

Blog

by Roger Williamson September 2015

The white-painted cluster of traditional style buildings might suggest that this was a farm on the South African veldt. Not so however—it was Trade...

• Automotive industry
• Carbon tax
• Economic integration

Blog

by Roger Williamson September 2015

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...

• Economic development
• Structural adjustment (Economic policy)
• Gross national product

Working Paper

Why 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...

• Communist
• Comparative economics
• Economic development

Working Paper

This paper focuses on the relationship between regional integration in the Southern African Development Community and national policies. Review of trade, industrial, agricultural, labour, and related policy areas, indicates that national policies can...

• Macroeconomics
• Regional economics

Research Brief

Integration of Latin America into the international economy over the past quarter century has led to faster export growth, but not to faster GDP or productivity growth Contrary to mainstream analysis, under the current market reforms countries have...

• Economic integration
• Foreign exchange
• International trade

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Symposium on Spatial Inequality in Latin America

• Income
• Panel analysis
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Symposium on Spatial Inequality in Latin America

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Regional economics

Book

What exactly is spatial inequality? Why does it matter? And what should be the policy response to it? These questions have become important in recent years as the spatial dimensions of inequality have begun to attract considerable policy interest. In...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue A Collection of UNU-WIDER articles in Chinese

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Index numbers (Economics)

Book Chapter

Part of Book National Perspectives on the New Regionalism in the South

• International relations
• International trade
• Regional economics

Book Chapter

Part of Book Spatial Disparities in Human Development

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty measurement

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development

• Economic development
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development

• Choice
• Economic equilibrium
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development

• Economic development
• Regional economics
• Technological innovations

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development in Asia

• Equality and inequality
• Poverty measurement
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Inequality and Poverty in China

• Equality and inequality
• Poverty
• Methodology (Poverty)

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development

• Equality and inequality
• International trade
• Regional economics

Book

This book is dedicated to the implications of the New Regionalism for global security and development. The fourth volume in the five-volume New Regionalism Series, it features contributions from the UNU/WIDER project on New Regionalism. Earlier...

• Economic development
• Globalization
• Regional economics

Book

This is the second of five volumes reporting on the UNU/WIDER project on New Regionalism. Whereas the first volume dealt with the two processes of globalization and regionalization in more general terms, this volume presents various national...

• Globalization
• Regional economics

Book

This book is dedicated to the implications of the New Regionalism for global security and development. The fourth volume in the five-volume New Regionalism Series, it features contributions from the UNU/WIDER project on New Regionalism. Earlier...

• Economic development
• Globalization
• Regional economics

Book

This is the second of five volumes reporting on the UNU/WIDER project on New Regionalism. Whereas the first volume dealt with the two processes of globalization and regionalization in more general terms, this volume presents various national...

• Globalization
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Conflict and Peace-building

• International economic relations
• Regional economics
• International security

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa

• Economic development
• Regional economics
• Regional planning

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa

• Income distribution
• Regional economics
• Rural development

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa

• Equality and inequality
• Income
• Poverty

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Issues in Africa

• Conflict management
• Justice, Administration of
• Regional economics

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Spatial Inequality and Development in Asia

• Equality and inequality
• Global warming
• Regional economics