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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...
130 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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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...
Journal Special Issue
Aid to AfricaThe Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) give aid to Africa a new emphasis. Yet aid flows to Africa have trended downward over the last decade, and as a consequence more Africans now live in poverty. This is especially true of Sub-Saharan Africa. Any...
Working Paper
The impact of aid on total government expendituresAid is said to be fungible at the aggregate level if it raises government expenditures by less than the total amount. This happens when the recipient government decreases domestic revenue, decreases net borrowing, or when aid bypasses the budget...
Working Paper
A Global Environmental Compact for Sustainable DevelopmentThe proposals in this paper derive from studies undertaken at WIDER on questions relating to sustainable development in developing countries. The paper attempts to quantify the resource transfer implications of supporting feasible environment...
Policy Brief
Fiscal Policy for Poverty Reduction, Reconstruction, and GrowthGrowth, poverty reduction, and social peace are all undermined when public expenditure management and taxation are weak and when the fiscal deficit and public debt are not managed successfully. And large-scale aid and debt relief cannot work without...
Working Paper
Innovative Ways of Making Aid Effective in GhanaThere has been significant amount of aid inflows to developing countries including Ghana, but these have been very volatile. Aid flows have been associated with low domestic resource mobilization and have reduced Ghana to a country heavily dependent...
Working Paper
Aid and Growth in Sub-Saharan AfricaThis paper is a contribution to the literature on aid and growth. Despite an extensive empirical literature in this area, existing studies have not addressed directly the mechanisms via which aid should affect growth. We identify investment as the...
Working Paper
The Fiscal Effects of Aid in GhanaAn important feature of aid to developing countries is that it is given to the government. As a result, aid should be expected to affect fiscal behaviour, although theory and existing evidence is ambiguous regarding the nature of these effects. This...
Working Paper
Advancing Small Area EstimationThe poverty mapping methodology for estimating welfare rankings from small areas has proven to be useful in guiding allocation of government funds, regional planning, and general policy formulation. Nevertheless, poverty mapping also suffers from a...
Working Paper
Simulating the Effects of Debt Relief in ZambiaThe HIPC initiative for debt relief in the poorest countries has been extended to cover more countries. Zambia is one the countries accepted under the enhanced initiative for a debt relief of US$ 3.8 billion. In this paper, the possible effects of...
Working Paper
The HIPC Initiative and Poverty Reduction in GhanaThis paper presents a review of the current debt problem in Ghana and assesses whether debt relief under the HIPC initiative can be effectively translated into poverty reduction. The extent of the debt burden is jeopardizing Ghana’s effort at poverty...
Working Paper
Overcoming the Fiscal Crisis of the African StateA critical task is to construct a development state-a set of democratically-accountable institutions capable of effective policy design and implementation. The new state agenda is ambitious and resource intensive. It cannot therefore be achieved...
Working Paper
Infrastructure and Climate ChangeThe African Development Bank has called for US$40 billion per year over the coming decades to be provided to African countries to address development issues directly related to climate change. The current study addresses a key component of these...
Working Paper
Global Integration and Growth in Honduras and NicaraguaThis paper discusses the experience with opening up to the global economy of two small Central American countries, Honduras and Nicaragua. They have both strengthened democratic processes and reduced defence expenditure dramatically. Both have...
Working Paper
Fiscal Policy and Private Investment in Less Developed CountriesThis paper analyses the impact of fiscal policy on private investment for a sample of thirty-three LDCs. The paper makes a number of important contributions to the existing empirical literature. Its main contribution is that it is the first attempt...
Working Paper
Hiccups for HIPCs?In this paper we discuss monetary and fiscal policy issues facing heavily-indebted poor countries (HIPCs) who receive debt reduction via the enhanced HIPC initiative. This debt relief program is distinguished from previous ones by its conditionality...
Working Paper
Tax Competition, Globalization and Declining Social ProtectionThe decline, or stagnation, in broad-based social expenditure, so crucial to the well being of mother and child, occurs because of various reasons. First, the government may derive less utility from this category of expenditure, compared to spending...
Working Paper
Determinants of Income Inequality and its Effects on Economic GrowthThe paper empirically investigates, in the context of African countries, the determinants of income distribution and inequality, the effect of inequality on economic growth, and the channels through which inequality affects growth. Data for 35...
Working Paper
HIPC Debt Relief and Policy Reform IncentivesIn this paper, I discuss the incentives that the HIPC Initiative could create in debtor countries in favour of economic adjustment and reform. The usual debt-overhang argument, stating that debt relief will increase the net benefits of reforms, needs...
Working Paper
Can HIPC Reduce Poverty in Tanzania?While growth has increased in Tanzania during the past five or six years, it is still too low to have a visible impact on poverty. Indeed, recent evidence suggests that the amounts of both income and non-income poverty are roughly the same as they...
Working Paper
Changing Approaches to Public Expenditure Management in Low-Income Aid Dependent CountriesThe present paper critically examines how aid dependent low-income countries have approached the process of public expenditure management reform during the 1990s. It begins with an overview of broader public sector reform initiatives in LDCs which...
Working Paper
Reform of the Malawian Public SectorSince the early 1990s, Malawi has tried to undertake economic reforms, including the restructuring of the public sector, even as it embraced democratic reforms. Paucity of human and financial resources has made the process difficult and drawn out...
Working Paper
Debt Reduction for Poverty Eradication in the Least Developed CountriesThis paper reviews the main obstacles to human and social development posed by the current external debt burdens of the least development countries. In particular, it analyses the shortcomings of the mechanisms and thresholds used to assess the...
Working Paper
Waiving and Drowning? Debt and the Millennium Declaration Development GoalsThis paper relates the challenge of debt and the opportunities of debt reduction to the task of achieving the Millennium Declaration Development Goals, major new benchmarks for progress in development and reduction in poverty, inspired by a series of...
Journal Article
What determines public education expenditures in Russia?Recent studies suggest that the allocation of expenditures in education is important for growth. The state of public education spending in many transition economies highlights the need for an assessment of the nature of education expenditures in...
Research Brief
What is the Effect of Aid on Primary Enrolment and Quality of Education?An increase of education aid by one per cent increases the rate of primary education enrolment by 0.06 percentage points. The most robust effect on primary enrolment is obtained by aid to the category ‘education facilities and training’. High levels...
Research Brief
How Can Aid Help Agriculture Become More Resilient to Climate Change?Review shows that global agricultural production must be increased by about 70 per cent by 2050 in order to provide sufficient nourishment for the world’s growing population. Focusing on tropical climates to 2050, climate change is likely to reduce...
Research Brief
Impact of Aid for Health and Education on Gender Equity and Human DevelopmentInitial high human development index scores and per capita income have a strongmimpact on the outcomes of aid to the health and education sectors. An increase in the share of the government budget allocated to education and health improves overall...
Research Brief
How to Spend It?A donor dilemma: aid effectiveness in fragile states. Donors are often faced with the dilemma that those countries most in need of aid are often those least likely to spend it effectively. This dilemma can be characterized as an instance of the...
Working Paper
Social Spending and Aggregate Welfare in Developing and Transition EconomiesNotwithstanding the unprecedented attention devoted to reducing poverty and fostering human development via scaling up social sector spending, there is surprisingly little rigorous empirical work on the question of whether social spending is...
Blog
Beyond the Crisis of the African University - Why Institutions Matter
I recently returned from a week at the University of Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, speaking at a conference honouring Nobel laureate Desmond...
Journal Article
Public Sector Efficiency, Foreign Aid and Small Island Developing StatesPart of Journal Special Issue Policy Arena: Small Island Developing States
Journal Article
Does Aid Improve Public Service Delivery?Part of Journal Special Issue Foreign Aid Heterogeneity
Working Paper
Aid and Environment in MozambiqueMozambique benefits from environmental aid-related funds, but it is still unclear whether donor commitments render directly into projects that are copiously implemented for the purposes stated and what aid flows have actually been doing and are doing...
Working Paper
From Conflict to ReconstructionGovernments frequently compartmentalize issues of reform and reconstruction into separate strategies and separate ministries (the fate of poverty reduction as well). Donors do likewise, for each has its own responsibilities; the IMF focuses on reform...
Working Paper
Reaching the PoorCombining data from both, a nationwide standards of living survey (LSMS) and a national population and housing census, this paper generates a disaggregated map of poverty and living conditions in Mozambique. This analytical tool helps to overcome a...
Working Paper
Inequality and Economic GrowthAll of the recent empirical work on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth has used inequality data that are not consistently measured. This paper argues that this is inappropriate and shows that the significant negative...
Working Paper
Growth, Income Distribution, and PovertyThis paper reviews recent research dealing with the relationships between economic growth, income distribution, and poverty. This generally fails to find any systematic pattern of change in income distribution during recent decades. Neither does it...
Book
Fiscal Policy for DevelopmentFiscal policy is critical to the development of poor countries. Public spending on pro-poor services and public goods must be increased, tax revenues must be mobilized, and macro-economic stabilization must be achieved without inhibiting growth...
Book Chapter
Income Distribution and Tax and Government Social Spending Policies in Developing CountriesPart of Book Inequality, Growth and Poverty in an Era of Liberalization and Globalization
Working Paper
Lessons from the Transition EconomiesWhy 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...
Blog
Malawi's Farm Subsidy Benefits the Poor but Doesn't Come CheapMalawi’s farm input subsidy benefits the poor and can be part of a viable national development strategy. Agriculture is Malawi’s main economic sector...
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
Alternatives to local contentThis paper suggests that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more minimal one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. We argue that local content...
Working Paper
How To Spend ItAs aid diminishes in importance, donors need a capacity that enables governments to improve the quality of their public spending. In this study I suggest three such organizational innovations: independent ratings of spending systems, Independent...
Displaying 48 of 130 results