This project uses UNU-WIDER’s high level of convening power – its ability to mobilize senior figures in the development policy debate from different paradigms – and its ability to stand aside from the fashions and pressures of the academy, to bring together a team of senior economists of longstanding experience (including policy advisers at national level and within international development agencies).
Researchers including Joseph Stiglitz, Andy Sumner, and Kermal Dervis focus on how to reinvigorate development economics to once again address the challenge of productive transformation to speak to the needs of policy-makers. They evaluate what was right, and what was wrong, in the toolkit of big development economics as it has evolved over the past 60 years; and establish how best to analyse productive transformation in ways that are relevant in today’s global economy and to today’s decision-makers.
With a broad geographical spread, the project captures transformation experiences and successes from a variety of low-, middle- and high-income countries, and its results will be translated into a set of policy recommendations for today’s low- and lower-middle income countries.
The effects of a rural roads programme depend on labour mobility, how the programme is financed, and agglomera-tion economies. If financed by a rural poll tax and cross-price effects and agglomeration economies are sufficiently small, the wage will...
This paper examines the relationship between poverty dynamics, causal pluralism, and mixed method research approaches. It reviews the nature and significance of the shift from the analysis of poverty status to poverty dynamics, discusses different...
Do urban agglomeration economies enhance the social profitability of rural roads? When all goods are traded at parametric world prices, lower transport costs benefit villagers. Urban activities and welfare are unaffected if labour is immobile, but...
This paper introduces the origins and scope of humanitarian economics, a vibrant field of study and practice that deals with the economics and political economy of war, disaster, and humanitarian action. To illustrate the field’s scientific and...
We survey selected parts of the growing literature on the microeconomics of violent conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where methodological and knowledge gaps remain. We focus our review on the...
This paper re-examines the validity of using expected values to evaluate the social profitability of public investments under uncertainty. Departing from the usual assumption of an aggregate good, the setting is a small open economy that faces...
This paper makes the case for the systematic appraisal of public sector projects using shadow prices as the signals of social scarcities. In so doing, it attempts to redress the balance between estimating inputs and outputs, central though that task...
在1985-2015 年期间，全球化加深了与要素禀赋相关的部门专门化模式。在技术 力量充足的发达国家，制造业变得更为技术密集化。在土地稀缺的东亚发展中国家， 尤其是中国，劳动密集型的制造业得到扩张。在土地充足的发展中地区，制造业却陷 入停滞甚至衰退；然而，在土地稀缺的南亚地区，制造业的发展受到低识字率、薄弱 基础设施的拖累。在大多数国家，服务部门在产出和就业中所占的比重增加，但主要 原因却并非全球化。未来数十年部门结构的变化受到许多不确定性的影响，但大体趋...
During 1985–2015, globalization intensified the factor-endowment-related pattern of sectoral specialization. In skill-abundant developed countries, manufacturing became more skill-intensive. In land-scarce developing East Asia, labour-intensive...
NOTE | Revised version August 2017 available. View and download the revised version. Using comparable fiscal incidence analysis, this paper examines the impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty in 25 countries for around 2010. Success in...
The storyline The basic storyline of this blog is economic growth since the Cold War. It is outlined how growth has produced two new middles. The...
This paper discusses the emergence of two new middles since the Cold War, namely middle-income countries and people living above absolute poverty but below a security-from poverty-line. The paper sets out what has happened. It is argued that although...
The state has played a major role in the most important developmental successes. This paper discusses the advances in our understanding of the role of the state in the developmental process over the past thirty years, and the contribution to those...
This paper reviews the many areas in which economists play an important role in policy-making, including the quantification of objectives set by political processes, formulation of macroeconomic policy where economists have a dominating role, and...
The policy advice given by economists in international institutions is influenced by their prior academic work. In my case, applied general equilibrium work resulted both in a belief in the necessity of decentralized markets and in a distrust of...
China is emerging as perhaps the most globally significant development finance provider, going far beyond concessional foreign aid. With China’s initiatives to create and foster new multi-lateral finance institutions, and to work in terms of large...
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