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Why countries best placed to handle the pandemic appear to have fared the worstDuring the first year of the pandemic, it was wealthier countries, with their comparatively stronger health systems, civil services, legal systems and...
19 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
COVID-19 and the stateWe expect effective state institutions to matter in a country’s ability to respond to crises. Yet notably in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, what has stood out in simple global snapshots is that wealthier countries with stronger institutions...
Working Paper
Fifty years of Asian experience in the spread of education and healthcareThis paper analyses the dramatic spread of education and healthcare in Asia and also the large variations in that spread across and within countries over 50 years. Apart from differences in initial conditions and income levels, the nature of the...
Working Paper
The state and developmentUsing a comparative frame that draws on the variation of developmental trajectories in Asia from Northeast Asia to China to Southeast Asia and to India, this paper explores the changing role of the state in these countries and the contributions that...
Working Paper
A macroeconomic perspective on Asian developmentMacroeconomic strategies and policies have differed significantly among Asian countries over the last fifty years, and yet some common issues recur despite their immense diversity in inherited historical initial conditions, differences in political...
Working Paper
An empirical analysis of state fragility and growthThe role of the state in promoting development is well established in the institutional economics literature. Yet, in recent decades the attention has been turned to the opposite side of the spectrum. Facing high levels of poverty and showing a...
Working Paper
The governance of global value chains, the state, and small businessesWe use the case of the timber industry in Myanmar to analyse how national regulatory frameworks and international ecological discourses affect forest management and small businesses. The state plays two roles in the timber industry in Myanmar: it is...
Working Paper
Health, development, and institutional factorsThe central aim of this text is to show the impact institutions have on the performance of the health sector in Mozambique. The text shows that of the social determinants of health, institutions play a central role in the performance of the...
Working Paper
A new social contract inclusive of informal workersThis paper makes the case that current social contracts are often inadequate, irrelevant, or unjust for informal workers. It outlines three possible future scenarios: the bad old contract, an even worse contract, and a better new contract.Under the...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and the stateDuring the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was wealthier countries with stronger institutions that suffered the highest numbers of cases and fatalities. Many weaker countries were instead praised for more effective pandemic response. What...
Working Paper
The politics of affirmative action: ethnicity, equity, and state-business relations in MalaysiaMalaysia provides for interesting paradoxes. Poverty was reduced by adopting a horizontal perspective to policy planning through affirmative action targeting one ethnic group lagging economically in society. However, outcomes of affirmative action...
Displaying 16 of 19 results