Impact
UNU-WIDER research cited in major UN DESA and EU Tax Observatory reports

The topic of the 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development report is Financing Sustainable Transformation. The annual report was issued by the UN Secretary-General's Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development, and published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) in April 2023. 

The report finds that SDG financing needs are growing, but development financing is not keeping pace. The war in Ukraine, sharp increases in food and energy prices, and rapidly tightening financial conditions have increased hunger and poverty and reversed progress on the SDGs. If left unaddressed, a “great finance divide” will translate into a lasting sustainable development divide. The report calls on the international community to take advantage of the moment to align financing with sustainable development.

UNU-WIDER's book Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System and WIDER Annual Lecture 18 on Managing Structural Transformation are among the references of the report.

The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development, themed Financing for Development at a Crossroads and published in April 2024, highlights UNU-WIDER's Government Revenue Dataset (GRD) as one of the most important sources for revenue statistics.

The Global Tax Evasion Report 2024, published by the EU Tax Observatory in October 2023, is based on the work of more than 100 researchers globally. The report addresses questions on whether global tax evasion is falling or rising, and potential new issues that are emerging. Among others, the report cites working papers on mandatory disclosure rules and real estate ownership transparency, published under the UNU-WIDER project Detecting and countering illicit financial flows.

Both of the reports highlight the findings of the WIDER Working Paper Global Profit Shifting, 1975–2019, by Ludvig Wier and Gabriel Zucman.