Working Paper
Diaspora externalities
Migration decisions affect those left-behind in ways that are partly taken into account by market forces (e.g., wage effects on labour markets) and for the most part these can be seen as pure externalities. Diasporas are an example of such an...
Working Paper
New data, new approaches and new evidence
The Republic of South Africa faces the imperative of escaping economic stagnation. This paper seeks to synthesize results from a series of research efforts, including but not limited to the work conducted under the UNU-WIDER project on ‘Regional...
Research uptake
Learning to Compete (L2C): Accelerating Industrial Development in Africa
Learning to compete (L2C) is collaborative research project between UNU-WIDER, the African Development Bank, and the Brookings Institution. The project aims to answer the question: why is there so little industry in Africa? Industry—including modern services and agro-industry—is often the key to job creation, poverty reduction, and growth. In order to sustain economic growth African industries need to learn to compete in global markets. L2C sets out to provide better answers to a number of policy questions relevant to African industries achieving this competitiveness.
Project
Southern engines of global growth
Theme: 2006-07
The project centers on the inter-linkages between the major developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s growth on smaller economies and the rest of the...
Project
Fragility and development
Theme: 2006-07
In recent years there is a growing concern within the international donor community regarding the plight of a special group of countries labeled as 'Fragile States'. These states, which according to current donor lists currently numbers more than 40...
Working Paper
Agro-processing and horticultural exports from Africa
Sub-Saharan African exports of horticultural and processed agricultural products are growing in line with the major shift towards these products in world markets. Continued growth in these exports may be vitally important for expanding returns from...
Working Paper
The effects of Chinese import penetration on firm innovation
This paper evaluates the impact of Chinese import penetration on the innovation of Vietnamese manufacturing firms from 2011 to 2015, exploiting variations in import exposure by industry specialization and instrumenting for Chinese import penetration...
Working Paper
Faraway, so close: the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on political violence in Asian countries
We show that the Russia–Ukraine-war-induced changes in the international price of wheat affected political violence in Asia. Using data from 13 countries and more than four million cell-level observations, we show that a higher wheat price increases...
Working Paper
What traders know: the (mis)perceptions of formal and informal cross-border traders
Cross-border traders face a choice between official and unofficial border crossings. The latter allow them to evade taxes, but expose them to other risks, such as bribes, fines, and arrest. We investigate the perceptions of cross-border traders about...
Technical Note
The Uganda Revenue Authority trade data
This Technical Note describes Ugandan trade data covering import and export declarations for ten calendar years from January 2013 to December 2022, constructed from transactional-level Ugandan administrative data. The trade data series contains...
Working Paper
An assessment of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s trade
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s foreign trade using quarterly trade data for the period 2019 to the second quarter of 2021. The exploratory analysis shows that growth of Kenya’s merchandise exports remained resilient...