Journal Article

This paper investigates the process of adjustment in employment. A dynamic model is applied to a panel of six Tunisian manufacturing industries observed over a period of 25 years, from 1971 to 1996. Industries are assumed to adjust their labor inputs...

• Commercial policy
• Labour demand
• Manufacturing industries

Journal Article

The Nordic model relies on high tax rates to finance an extensive welfare state. If labour supply elasticities are large, the burden of financing the model can be large even if, arguably, the practice of providing subsidised goods that support labour...

• Labour market
• Labour supply
• Taxation

Journal Article

The Mirrlees Review recommends that commodity taxation should in general be uniform, but with some goods consumed in conjunction with labour supply (such as child care) left untaxed. This article examines the validity of this claim in an optimal...

• Public goods
• Taxation

Journal Article

This paper examines the effects of health-oriented food tax reforms on the distribution of tax payments, food demand and health outcomes. We offer an illustration of how one can take into account the uncertainty related to both demand estimation and...

• Health
• Taxation

Journal Article

Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African...

• Economic development
• Gross national product
• Poverty

Journal Article

This paper evaluates the impact of an intervention to improve farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach to technology adoption in subsistence agriculture, using panel...

• Agriculture
• Food security
• Technological innovations

Journal Article

Fish stocks around the world are heavily overexploited in spite of fishing policies in several parts of the world designed to limit overfishing. Recent studies have found that the complexity of ecological systems and the diversity of species, as well...

• Aquaculture
• Natural resources

Journal Article

The theoretical analysis of optimal commodity taxation is advanced, but there is only limited empirical evidence to guide commodity tax policies. With this paper, we contribute to this body of literature by empirically examining, using Finnish...

• Children
• Public goods
• Taxation

Working Paper

Although development generally refers to a broad concept, the quest for development in Sub-Saharan Africa has been biased by ideological considerations which made abstraction of local conditions and people’s aspirations. The prevalent development...

• Economic development

Working Paper

Over the past decade, Africa has been experiencing an economic resurgence. Yet, the continent is facing several difficult challenges and many economies of the region continue to be among the least competitive in the world. Africa’s competitiveness is...

• Competition
• Industrial policy
• International economic relations

Working Paper

The effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. The limitations of aggregated data at sub-national levels have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household surveys. As an alternative, this paper contributes to the...

• Economic development
• Government policy (Poor)
• Public welfare

Blog

23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic development
• Economic growth

Working Paper

Marriage is the single most important economic transaction and social transition in the lives of young people. Yet little is known about the economics of marriage in much of the developing world. This paper examines the economics of marriage in North...

• Families
• Game theory
• Economic power

Working Paper

A sustainable pathway for Africa in the twenty-first century is laid out in the setting of the development of innovation capabilities and the capture of latecomer advantages. Africa has missed out on these possibilities in the twentieth century while...

• Economic development
• Industrial policy
• Industrialization

Working Paper

Africa’s improved growth performance over the last 15 years provides an opportunity for the continent to transit from recovery to structural transformation. This paper reviews the evolution of development theory and practice, the role of agriculture...

• Agriculture
• Economic development
• Economic policy

Working Paper

Economics has rediscovered happiness even though the discipline has always been about human wellbeing. A growing evidence suggests that happier people can be more productive and innovative, which leads to profitability and economic growth. Thus...

• Democratization
• Economic development
• Social values

Working Paper

Countries need capacity for a variety of reasons, including sustaining economic growth, generating jobs, reducing poverty, effectively managing development programmes, and transforming societies and economies. A lot of effort has been expended to...

• Economic development
• Human capital
• Institutional economics

Working Paper

Does democracy promote economic growth? There is still an ongoing debate over the economic implications of democracy, and this question has gained critical importance particularly in the African context, where a wave of democratization in the early...

• Democracy
• Democratization
• Economic development

Working Paper

Researchers have linked sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) poor growth performance in recent decades to several factors, including geography, institutions, and low returns to investment. This literature has not yet integrated the research that identifies...

• Economic development
• Fiscal policy
• Income distribution

Working Paper

This paper provides a historical overview of the South African trade union movement, followed by a brief discussion of the labour market legislation and institutions formed since 1994. Thereafter, a detailed evaluation of the impact of trade unions...

• Industrial relations
• Labour market
• Labour unions

Working Paper

Scholars and practitioners once commonly linked ‘African culture’ to a distinctive ‘African capitalism’, at odds with genuine capitalism and the demands of modern business. Yet contemporary African business cultures reveal that a capitalist ethos has...

• Business
• Capitalism
• Entrepreneurship

Working Paper

This paper looks at the prospects of a demographic dividend in Africa in the near future. While acknowledging that the fertility declines which change population age structures and thus dependency ratios have been slow to begin and often seem to have...

• Family policy
• Human fertility
• Health

Journal Article

A considerable amount of recent work in political science and economics builds from the hypothesis that ethnic heterogeneity leads to poor provision of public goods, a key component of poor governance. Much of this work cites Alesina, Baqir and...

• Corporate governance
• Ethnic relations
• Public goods

Working Paper

The informal sector makes up an overwhelming share of both gross domestic product and total employment in Africa. In this paper, we lay out some of the basic characteristics of the informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa, relevant institutions, and...

• Economic development
• Households
• Informal sector

Working Paper

Due to increasing population pressure on limited cultivable land in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), farm size has been shrinking, fallow periods have been shortened, and soil fertility has been declining. In accordance with the Boserupian...

• Agriculture
• Environmental economics
• Land tenure

Working Paper

This paper discusses dimensions of inequality in sub-Saharan Africa and their causes. It starts with a review of the empirical evidence about inequality during the colonial period as well as the post-independence era. Then it discusses the forces...

• Education
• Equality and inequality
• Human capital

Working Paper

Local institutional and structural (meso) factors can play a role in mediating the returns to a macro-social policy. I focus on the Brazilian cash-transfer-programme Bolsa Familia and check how contextual features influence the returns to transfers...

• Equality and inequality
• Institutional economics
• Government policy (Poor)

Working Paper

Malaria still claims a heavy human and economic toll, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the causality between malaria and poverty is presumably bi-directional, malaria plays a role in the economic difficulties of the region. This...

• Economic development
• Health
• Poverty

Working Paper

This paper examines China and Africa co-operation from the angle of structural transformation as a major driver of growth and job creation. Being a bit ahead in the structural transformation process, China can provide ideas, tacit knowledge...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic development
• Industrial policy

Working Paper

Little investigation has been made to explain why women are less likely than are men to support democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. This gender difference in politics has been found in numerous studies and may hinder the much needed legitimation of...

• Democracy
• Women

Working Paper

We consider economic development of sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of slow convergence of productivity, both across sectors and firms within sectors. Why have ‘productivity enclaves’, islands of high productivity in a sea of smaller low...

• Industrial cost
• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Industrial organization (Economic theory)

Working Paper

Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa...

• Commerce
• Economies of scale
• International economic relations

Working Paper

Agriculture and food cultivation production remains a key sector in the Vietnamese economy in terms of productive activities, income generation, and national export earnings. Higher world market prices should therefore in principle have a beneficial...

• Agriculture and state
• Economic development
• Food industry and trade

Working Paper

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are now widely used in development economics. However, their use is often resisted by non-governmental development organizations. The objections they raise differ between the three types of activities of such non...

• Economic development projects
• Nonprofit organizations
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

This paper documents and analyses the predominance of informal employment in Africa and shows that lack of demand for labour rather than worker characteristics is the main reason for pervasive underemployment. Integration into the global economy and...

• Agriculture
• Economic development
• Labour costs

Working Paper

This paper investigates if changes in the minimum wage have influenced changes on the formality and informality rates, and the level of wages in Ecuador. A 12-year panel was built. It allows to overcome the short time span of household data and so to...

• Informal sector
• Labour market
• Labour supply

Working Paper

This paper discusses different approaches to the measurement of global interpersonal in equality. Trends in global interpersonal inequality during 1975-2005 are measured using data from UNU-WIDER’s World Income Inequality Database. In order to better...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution

Working Paper

The objectives of the study are three-fold: to investigate who are vulnerable to welfare loss from health shocks, what are the household responses to cope with the economic burden of health shocks and if policy responses like state health insurance...

• Health
• Healthcare
• Households

Working Paper

To continue its economic growth and create new and better livelihoods, Africa must transform the productive side of its economy. Ongoing globalization—in trade, finance, and technology—opens up new possibilities for structural transformation, but...

• Economic development
• Globalization
• International economic relations

Journal Article

This article explores how ethnic politics may operate differently in societies with “ranked” versus “unranked” ethnic systems, where ethnicity and class correlate closely versus very little. It focuses on two hypotheses suggested, but not tested, in...

• Corporate governance
• Ethnic relations
• Public goods

Working Paper

This study utilizes panel data from 14 provinces of Kazakhstan and investigates the link between the point-source resources (oil and gas) and economic growth via institutional quality. Labour force migration from manufacturing to non-traded sector...

• Agriculture
• Econometrics
• Raw materials

Working Paper

This paper proposes a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal multidimensional categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Equality and inequality
• Poverty

Working Paper

I investigate the relationship between children’s endowment and parental investment using a rich dataset on a cohort of children from Ethiopia, who were surveyed at ages eight, twelve and fifteen. Children’s endowment is measured by scores on tests...

• Capital
• Children
• Econometric models (Economic development)

Journal Article

Recent evidence from an exhaustive political-economy study of growth of African economies—the Growth Project of the African Economic Research Consortium—suggests that ‘policy syndromes’ have substantially contributed to the generally poor growth in...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Macroeconomics
• Social conflict

Working Paper

This paper examines the impacts of the financial, food and fuel crises on the livelihoods of low-income households Nigeria. It uses primary household level data from Nigeria to analyse the impacts of induced price variability on household welfare...

• Children
• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Poverty

Book Chapter

By applying a unified framework, this book examines the impact of land tenure reforms on poverty reduction and natural resource management in countries in Africa and Asia with highly diverse historical contexts. These land tenure reforms include Land...

• Land reform
• Land tenure
• Land use

Blog

by Luis Felipe López-Calva January 2013

Luis-Felipe Lopez-Calva [1] The concept of social class and specifically middle class, has been widely discussed in sociology and other social...

• Households
• Human capital
• Income distribution

Working Paper

Recent evidence from an exhaustive political economy study of growth of African economies—the growth project of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) suggests that ‘policy syndromes’ have substantially contributed to the generally poor...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Macroeconomics
• Social conflict

Journal Article

While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth–poverty accounting and...

• Comparative economics
• Mathematical models
• Poverty

Journal Article

Africa is urbanizing rapidly. Yet most dual economy models focus on the sectoral rather than spatial dimensions of development. This article adopts a “dual–dual” approach to measuring rural/urban and farm/nonfarm linkages. We develop an economy-wide...

• Agriculture
• Poverty
• Urbanization

Working Paper

We study the influence of economic inequality on co-operation and aid distribution in community-based development schemes. For this, we organized a field experiment in which community members contributed to a collective effort to attract aid. We find...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Equality and inequality

Working Paper

A subjective well-being approach is followed to assess the magnitude of inefficiency in the use of income. The information comes from a Mexican survey and an X-inefficiency technique is used. The paper shows that there exists substantial inefficiency...

• Income
• Poverty

Working Paper

Can we predict when and where violence will break out within cases of genocide? Given often weak political will to respond, knowing where to strategically prioritize limited resources is valuable information for international decision makers...

• Conflict management
• National security
• Social conflict

Working Paper

Initial models of development debates on how to achieve economic growth have been added to by a focus on social issues such as education and political participation. These debates and discourses about development are shaped by international...

• Economic policy
• Education
• International agencies

Working Paper

Using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2005, we examine intergenerational occupational mobility in India, an issue on which very few systematic and rigorous studies exist. We group individuals into classes and document patterns of...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Public welfare

Journal Article

Africa’s urban poor increasingly represent a key constituency for electoral mobilization. Opposition parties, which are pivotal for democratic consolidation, have nevertheless exhibited disparate success at obtaining votes from this constituency. To...

• Democracy
• Democratization
• Populism

Working Paper

Using panel datasets from Mexico and Chile for the 2000s, we examine the determinants of middle-class intra-generational mobility. We define the middle class by means of a latent index of economic wellbeing that is less sensitive to short-term...

• Households
• Human capital
• Labour market

Blog

by M. G. Quibria October 2012

M.G. Quibria In the wake of the worst famine of Bangladesh of the post-World War era Professor Muhammad Yunus launched a microcredit experiment in...

• Economic development
• Households
• Income

Working Paper

Current explanations for private consumption’s diminished role in China focus on the expansion of exports and investments. Using structural path analysis, we find additional contributing factors. First, growth patterns during 1997-2007 favoured...

• Consumption
• Households
• Regional economics

Working Paper

This paper explores the relationship between microcredit and poverty reduction. To investigate this question, we posit a bare-bone, household model that outlines the economic environment within which various types of family microenterprises operate...

• Households
• Labour market
• Microfinance

Working Paper

This paper considers the effect of financial liberalisation on access to investment finance using firm level data covering 57 developing and transition countries. An index is presented which measures financial market liberalisation along the...

• Credit
• Finance
• Financial institutions

Working Paper

A natural way of viewing an inequality or a poverty measure is in terms of the vector distance between an actual (empirical) distribution of incomes and some appropriately normative distribution (reflecting a perfectly equal distribution of incomes...

• Equality and inequality
• Income
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

This paper reviews the evidence on the ‘inclusiveness’ of the growth in consumption expenditure that has occurred in India over the last four decades or so. The notion of dynamic inclusiveness is framed in terms of imagined normative allocations of...

• Consumption
• Economic development
• Equality and inequality

Journal Article

We provide a comprehensive approach for analyzing the evolution of poverty using Mozambique as a case study. Bringing together data from disparate sources, we develop a novel 'back-casting' framework that links a dynamic computable general...

• Equality and inequality
• Household survey
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

The present paper is a selective overview, very considerably based on work in which the author himself has been involved, of the difficulties which can arise in the measurement of poverty and inequality when one compares populations of differing size...

• Equality and inequality
• Population
• Poverty

Working Paper

Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African...

• Economic development
• Gross national product
• Poverty

Working Paper

The rush for land acquisition—primarily driven by food shortages, food price volatility, and the run for agrofuel—has drawn considerable attention, as documented by reports published in late 2009, 2010, and 2011. Terminological differences aside, it...

• Agriculture
• Equality and inequality
• Food supply

Working Paper

This paper attempts to contribute to the understanding of the impacts of secure rural agricultural land rights on labour structural transformation from agriculture to non-agriculture as well as on urbanization, with a specific focus on Thailand...

• Labour
• Land tenure
• Rural development

Journal Article

Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around...

• Depressions
• Economic development
• Globalization

Book Chapter

Fragile states have very mixed characteristics. Some are experiencing violent conflict, some are ‘post-conflict’, some have avoided large-scale violence–so far. Many are resource poor, but some are resource rich. Many are landlocked, but certainly...

• Conflict management
• Failed states
• International relations

Blog

Channing Arndt, Andres Garcia, Finn Tarp, and James Thurlow Economic growth typically reduces poverty, but global averages conceal wide variation at...

• Comparative economics
• Mathematical models
• Poverty

Journal Article

The role of agriculture in development remains much debated. This paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty, as opposed to growth alone. The contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth...

• Distribution
• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

Recent research regarding property rights and economic development often treats property rights security in a country as homogeneous, although protecting the private entitlements of some can entail preventing others from claiming and controlling...

• Equality and inequality
• Law
• Minorities

Working Paper

This study examines the Prebisch and Singer hypothesis using a panel of 24 commodity prices from 1900 to 2010. The modelling approach stems from the need to meet two key concerns: (1) the presence of cross-sectional dependence among commodity prices...

• Raw materials
• Panel analysis
• Prices

Journal Article

Economic growth in Vietnam was resilient to the global commodity and financial crises, but it is unclear why. Impacts on employment and poverty are also disputed. We develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to decompose growth and...

• Commercial policy
• Government policy (Poor)
• Financial crisis

Working Paper

The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Today, as the region faces a growing ‘youth bulge’ that is disproportionately burdened by un- and underemployment, capturing the votes of this demographic...

• Democracy
• Unemployment
• Voting

Working Paper

In this study an attempt has been made to assess the potential of land as a municipal financing tool in four Indian cities, to enable better public service delivery and attainment of the MDGs. The institutional arrangements for land use are...

• Land tenure
• Public investments
• Public utilities

Working Paper

The paper revisits the policy debate on institutional reform approaches to property rights protection and empirically examines it in the context of FDI flows to the Middle East and Northern Africa region (MENA). Using panel data on 11 MENA countries...

• Institutional economics
• International trade
• Foreign investments

Working Paper

The current paper demonstrates a dichotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade, employing as case studies the two African countries, Botswana and Nigeria. Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of...

• Economic development
• Institutional economics
• International trade

Journal Article

Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest urbanising region of the world. This demographic transformation has occurred in concert with two other trends in the region, nascent democratisation and stalled decentralisation. Using the case of Lusaka, Zambia...

• Democratization
• Fiscal policy
• Political science

Working Paper

Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises—the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global...

• Depressions
• Economic development
• Globalization

Working Paper

Measuring poverty remains a complex and contentious issue. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty rates are higher, information bases typically weaker, and the underlying determinants of welfare relatively volatile. This paper...

• Equality and inequality
• Household survey
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

Electoral coalitions are becoming increasingly popular among opposition parties in Africa because they offer many advantages with respect to reducing party fragmentation and increasing incumbent turnovers. At the same time, however, they are often...

• Political science
• Strategic planning
• Voting

Working Paper

This paper first shows that important economic arguments in favor of the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis of falling terms of trade of developing countries have implicitly relied on the role of multinational corporations and foreign direct investment. As...

• International business enterprises
• International trade
• Foreign investments

Journal Article

The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Yet, despite their numerical importance and the historical relevance of generational identities within the region, very little is really known about the...

• Democracy
• Unemployment
• Voting

Book Chapter

The current paper demonstrates a dichotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade, employing as case studies the two African countries, Botswana and Nigeria. Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of...

• Economic development
• Institutional economics
• International trade

Working Paper

The study presents recent global evidence on the transformation of economic growth to poverty reduction in developing countries, with emphasis on the role of income inequality. The focus is on the period since the early/mid-1990s when growth in these...

• Economic development
• Equality and inequality
• Government policy (Poor)

Journal Article

Objectives. The study seeks to provide comparative global evidence on the role of income inequality, relative to income growth, in poverty reduction.Methods. An analysis-of-covariance model is estimated using a large global sample of 1980–2004...

Working Paper

Contrary to the popular notion that money that is easily earned, is also easily spent, economic theory holds that income is fungible. Drawing on the concept of mental accounting, this study theoretically explores when such a link between spending...

• Consumption
• Mathematical models
• Microeconomics

Working Paper

While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth-poverty accounting and...

• Comparative economics
• Mathematical models
• Poverty

Working Paper

Debates about poverty relief and foreign aid often hinge on claims about how many poor people there are in the world and what constitutes poverty. Good measures of poverty are essential for addressing the world poverty problem. Measures of poverty...

• Equality and inequality
• Poverty
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

Drawing on insights from Latin America, this paper examines the factors that contributed to the use of populist strategies by political parties during recent presidential elections in Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia. Specifically, the paper argues...

• Economic development
• Political science
• Populism

Journal Article

In the light of the current global financial and economic crises, how would governments in sub-Saharan Africa allocate their budgets across sectors in response to a binding debt-servicing constraint? Within a framework of public-expenditure choice...

Working Paper

Economic growth in Vietnam has been fairly resilient to the global commodity and financial crises, but it is unclear why. In addition, the impact of the crises on employment and poverty is in dispute. We develop a dynamic computable general...

• Commercial policy
• Financial crisis
• Government policy (Poor)

Working Paper

Analysing a large sample of 1980–2004 unbalanced panel data, the current study presents comparative global evidence on the role of (income) inequality in poverty reduction. The evidence involves both an indirect channel via the tendency of high...

• Economic development
• Income distribution
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

The paper investigates the determinants of productivity growth in China. It also analyses the sustainability of the country's industrial growth by estimating sectoral productivity, accounting for energy usage and emission since the start of the...

• Economic development
• Industrial productivity
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

This paper demonstrates that the property of 'replication invariance', generally considered to be an innocuous requirement for the extension of fixed-population poverty comparisons to variable-population contexts, is incompatible with other plausible...

• Income distribution
• Population
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

Growth that reduces poverty is often considered pro-poor regardless of whether the poor benefit from it more than the non-poor. Such growth could simply be termed poverty-reducing growth. This paper argues that for growth to be pro-poor it should...

• Economic development
• Equity
• Income distribution

Working Paper

The role of agriculture in development remains much debated. This paper takes an empirical perspective and focuses on poverty, as opposed to growth alone. The contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its own growth...

• Distribution
• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

Using 2000-04 panel data this study analyses the pathways rural households followed out of poverty in two lagging provinces of China, Inner Mongolia and Gansu. Rising labour productivity in agriculture has been key, and still holds much promise...

• Agriculture
• Mathematical models
• Internal migration

Policy Brief

Africa is the developing region most at risk from the global economic crisis. Its recent strong growth has been interrupted. Already home to the largest number of low-income countries in the world, the region is now likely to experience higher...

• Financial crisis
• Macroeconomics
• Primary commodities

Policy Brief

One year into the global economic crisis, it has become clear that the paradigm for international development has changed irrevocably. With leadership, moral authority and the capacity of the West in international development diminishing, developing...

• Economic growth
• Financial crisis
• Regional economics

Working Paper

The 2008 episode of food price explosion, political turmoil, and human suffering revealed important flaws in the current global food architecture. This paper argues that to safeguard the strengths of the current system, four failures in market...

• Agriculture
• Agriculture and state
• Food security

Blog

by Luc Christiaensen August 2009

Luc Christiaensen Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER At the G8 July summit in Aquila, Italy, US$ 20 billion was pledged to support farmers in poorer...

• Agriculture
• Agriculture and state
• Food security

Working Paper

This paper outlines the impact of the global economic crisis on Africa. Recovery requires coordinated and consistent efforts to assist individual countries in mitigating (reducing) the risk, coping with the impact, and reducing risk over the longer...

• Economic development
• Economic policy
• Financial crisis

Working Paper

The Republic of Haiti is a prime international remittance recipient country in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). The downside of this fact may be that Haiti, based on population size, is also...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Emigrant remittances
• Emigration and immigration

Working Paper

Following the financial crisis that broke in the US and other Western economies in late 2008, there is now serious concern about its impact on the developing countries. The world media almost daily reports scenarios of gloom and doom, with many...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic development
• Financial crisis

Journal Article

In this article, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Data from 354 magisterial districts in South Africa are used with a variety of estimators to identify the determinants of regional...

• Manufacturing
• Transportation

Working Paper

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the highest growth rate in net international migration in the world. The reasons for this migration are investigated in this paper. First, a survey of the literature on the profile and determinants of international...

• Emigration and immigration
• Labour demand
• Natural disasters

Working Paper

We describe a new method of facilitating inequality and poverty analysis of grouped distributional data by allowing individual income observations to be reconstructed from any feasible grouping pattern. In contrast to earlier methods, our procedure...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

Geography causes African countries to experience a ‘proximity gap’. To overcome this gap a ‘big push’ may be needed in infrastructure. The cross-border nature of such infrastructure requires regional cooperation in at least four issues: transport...

• Economic integration
• Infrastructure (Economics)
• Internal migration

Policy Brief

The success of Africa's exports, as well as its spatial development, depends on lowering transport costs. In this Policy Brief, we address a number of pertinent questions on transport costs in Africa, such as 'what are transport costs?', 'do...

• Industrial cost
• Economic policy
• Infrastructure (Economics)

Working Paper

Use of migration tax as an instrument for financing development expenditure in poorer countries has received renewed attention recently and is evolving as an important subject of research in development economics. This paper discusses a related issue...

• Economic development
• Emigrant remittances
• Risk management

Working Paper

The paper explores the impact of a binding external debt-servicing constraint on the sectoral composition of government expenditures in the economies of Africa, where this constraint has traditionally been most prevalent. Applying seemingly unrelated...

• Public debt
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Public expenditure

Working Paper

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between exports, and in particular export diversity, and regional growth in a developing country context. Using export data for 19 sectors from 354 subnational (magisterial) districts of...

• Economic development
• Foreign investments
• Regional economics

Working Paper

In this paper, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Based on insights from new trade theory, the new economic geography (NEG) and gravity-equation modelling, an empirical model is specified...

• International trade
• Manufacturing
• Transportation cost

Working Paper

This paper provides empirical evidence on the location of export-oriented manufacturing firms in Africa (South Africa), and on how the patterns of location has changed over the past decade after the country embarked on trade liberalization. It is...

• Manufacturing industries
• Natural resources
• Trade regulation

Working Paper

The paper considers the political obstacles and supports for additional development finance and a number of possible devices through which advantage may be taken of the supports and the obstacles circumvented. It emphasizes the need for effective...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic development
• Globalization

Journal Article

This paper argues that relative exchange rates between the host countries of foreign direct investment affect their competition for FDI. Specifically, if the host country currency appreciates against the source country's currency more than that of...

• Economic policy
• Foreign exchange
• International business enterprises

Working Paper

If uncertainty exists over the exact location of the poverty line or over which measure to use to compare poverty between distributions, one may want to check whether poverty dominance holds. We develop a consistent statistical test to test the null...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Income distribution
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

This paper illustrates how the use of microeconometric techniques can be used to uncover the micro dynamics behind macro shocks. Using Mexican micro data we find out that—controlling for everything else—between 1994 and 1998 returns to personal...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Labour demand

Working Paper

This note points to certain similarities of orientation and outcome between Derek Parfit’s quest for a theory of beneficence and Amartya Sen’s quest for a suitable real-valued representation of poverty. It suggests that both projects, in a certain...

• Equality and inequality
• Index numbers (Economics)
• Poverty

Working Paper

In a heterogeneous population which can be partitioned into well-defined subgroups, it is plausible that the extent of measured aggregate poverty should depend upon the distribution of poverty across the subgroups. A judgment in favour of an equal...

• Equality and inequality
• Index numbers (Economics)
• Poverty

Working Paper

This paper explores the hypothesis that the phenomenon of child labour is explicable in terms of poverty that compels a household to keep its children out of school and put them to work in the cause of the household’s survival. In exploring the link...

• Children
• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Labour economics

Working Paper

We analyze the relation between inequality, corruption and competition in a developing economy context where markets are imperfect. We consider an economy where different types of households (efficient and inefficient) choose to undertake production...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Equality and inequality
• Economic equilibrium

Journal Article

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on public sector fiscal behaviour in Côte d'Ivoire. A special interest is the relationship between aid, debt servicing and debt, given that Côte d'Ivoire is a highly indebted country. The theoretical...

• Public debt
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Fiscal policy

Working Paper

This paper presents a model allowing one to analyze the joint determination of inequality, taxes, human capital and growth. We consider the political economy of redistribution between three income groups in a dynamic economy. The paper seeks to...

• Econometric models (Economic development)
• Education
• Income distribution

Journal Article

This paper models transnational terrorism as a three-way strategic interaction involving a government that faces armed opposition at home, which may spill over in the form of acts of terrorism by the state's opponents against the government's...

• Conflict management
• Game theory
• Social conflict

Journal Article

This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable industrial sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show...

• International trade
• Labour market
• Manufacturing

Working Paper

This paper uses a game-theoretic framework to explain how collectivist values hamper societies’ efforts to elicit cooperation in inter-group games of prisoners’ dilemma (PD) and draws on the results of the analysis to interpret the meanings of three...

• Cooperative societies
• Game theory
• Institutional economics

Working Paper

Findings of cross-cultural psychology suggest that different approaches to rule enforcement have cultural roots. Individualist societies have established a rule of law, in which rules prevail; collectivist societies have a rule of man, which allows...

• Informal sector
• Institutional economics

Working Paper

This paper analyses the role of exchange rates in the competition for FDI. Based on the assumption that two countries compete for FDI from the same source country, the paper shows explicitly that the relative FDI of one country is determined by the...

• Economic policy
• Foreign exchange
• International business enterprises

Working Paper

The objective here is to understand how the mobility of technical talent might be changing the structural relationship between rich and poor countries. This paper examines the under-researched relationship between India and Japan in the context of...

• Economic development
• Emigration and immigration
• Human capital

Working Paper

This paper examines the impact of income risk on the level of well-being of rural households in Nigeria. While income risk is defined as the risks associated with variability in income well-being is defined in terms of the level of utility reached by...

• Agriculture
• Income
• Quality of life

Working Paper

The present paper is a first attempt to develop a theoretical model using a short-term vis-à-vis long-term contract framework within which donor countries’ endorsement or rejection decision towards the recently proposed International Finance Facility...

• Decision making
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Simulation methods (Economics)

Working Paper

This paper discusses development policy objectives, noting how these have changed over the years, with a more explicit focus on poverty reduction coming recently to the fore. It also examines the relationship between economic growth and poverty...

• Economic development
• Equity
• Poverty

Working Paper

The Chinese economy underwent cyclical fluctuations in growth and inflation in the reform period. Contrasting views exist on the role of money in such fluctuations. This paper assesses these views employing structural VEC models based on the exchange...

• Business cycles
• Interest rate
• Econometric models (Macroeconomics)

Working Paper

This paper proposes a structural VAR model which extends the frameworks of Hoffmaister and Roldós (2001) and Prasad (1999). The model is then used to analyse the sources of China’s trade balance fluctuations in the period of 1985–2000. Efforts are...

• Business cycles
• Foreign exchange
• International trade

Working Paper

This paper represents a first attempt to study China’s business cycles using a formal analytical framework, namely, a structural VAR model. It is found that: (a) demand shocks were the dominant source of macroeconomic fluctuations, but supply shocks...

• Business cycles
• Communist
• Fiscal policy

Working Paper

Bourguignon and Fields (‘Poverty Measures and Anti-Poverty Policy’) and Gangopadhyay and Subramanian (‘Optimal Budgetary Intervention in Poverty Alleviation Schemes’) have derived optimal budgetary rules for the redress of poverty through direct...

• Equality and inequality
• Government policy (Poor)
• Poverty

Working Paper

This paper is a review and commentary, from both ethical and informational perspectives, of some known results in optimal anti-poverty budgetary rules for two kinds of intervention, direct income transfers and wage employment programmes.

• Equality and inequality
• Government policy (Poor)
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

This note advances a family of poverty measures, Πα, which are derived as simple, normalized Minkowski distance functions. The Πα indices turn out to be the αth roots of the corresponding Foster, Greer and Thorbecke Pα indices. The re-calibration of...

• Poverty
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

This paper establishes the principles which should govern the welfare and inequality analysis of heterogeneous income distributions. Two basic criteria—the ‘equity preference’ condition and the ‘compensation principle’—are shown to be fundamentally...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

The paper presents a model in which credit-constrained firms might delay the adoption of new and more productive technologies because of the very high external financing costs they face. Our point of departure is that the efficiency of the banking...

• Banking
• Credit
• Economic development

Working Paper

Using panel data this paper examines the effects of institutions on the success of reforms and integration in the Maghreb. Institutional quality measures are developed using fuzzy-set based transformations of civil liberties and political rights. We...

• Economic integration
• Institutional economics
• Panel analysis

Working Paper

This paper surveys recent research on aid and growth. It also provides an overview of research on inter-recipient aid allocation. The overall focus of the paper is on the relevance of these issues for poverty-efficient aid, defined as a pattern of...

• Democracy
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic growth

Working Paper

For transition economies labour market flexibility is necessary for successful restructuring and reallocation of labour force and for coping with the requirements of the European Monetary Union. In this paper we apply a novel approach to the issue of...

• Capital
• Labour
• Unemployment

Working Paper

The paper deals with the success of price controls in stabilizing high inflation rates and their effects on the real economy under an imperfect competition setting derived by optimal maximization. Our model builds on Helpman’s work of price controls...

• Imperfect competition
• Inflation
• Prices

Working Paper

Traditionally, the difference between income and expenditure reported in household surveys is used for estimation of savings at the household level. However, persistent deviation in consumption–income ratios by household income brackets raises...

• Households
• Public welfare
• Saving and investment

Working Paper

This paper extends the history of thought narrative on Allyn Young to recognize the close relationship that the classical growth theory has with the early development theory, as Young’s externalities-fuelled, cumulative growth process influenced the...

• Classical economics
• Economic development
• History of economics

Working Paper

This paper examines growth successes and failures across countries and notes the latter’s perplexing predominance among ex ante low-income economies. An explanation for this persistence of underdevelopment is proposed through an empirical...

• Agriculture
• Economic development
• Natural resources

Working Paper

This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on public sector fiscal behaviour in Côte d’Ivoire. A special interest is the relationship between aid, debt servicing and debt, given that Côte d’Ivoire is a highly indebted country. The theoretical...

• Public debt
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Fiscal policy

Working Paper

This paper investigates the simultaneous causal relationship between investments in information and communication technology (ICT) and foreign direct investment (FDI), with reference to its implications on economic growth. For the empirical analysis...

• Economic growth
• Information technology
• Investments

Working Paper

The present paper examines the impact of different aid types, namely project aid, programme aid, technical assistance and food aid on the fiscal sector of the aid-recipient economy by using time-series data for Côte d’Ivoire over the period 1975–99...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Fiscal policy

Working Paper

Using dynamic econometric techniques the paper investigates the determinants of private saving in Sri Lanka with a primary focus on the role of financial sector development. Empirical evidence is obtained indicating the existence of the Ricardian...

• Credit
• Econometrics
• Economic development

Working Paper

The paper explores the relationship between financial sector reforms and savings mobilization in Zambia. Although there exists an extensive literature on financial sector development and savings levels in developing countries, there does not seem to...

• Economic policy
• Financial institutions
• Microfinance

Working Paper

The paper uses different measures of financial sector development for a dynamic heterogeneous panel of 17 African countries to examine the impact of financial sector development on private savings. An innovative econometric methodology is also...

• Econometric models (Finance)
• Panel analysis
• Saving and investment

Working Paper

Building on recent work in the fiscal response literature, the present paper develops a new fiscal response model, which, for the first time in the relevant literature, combines the ideas of both endogenous and disaggregated aid. We endogenized aid...

• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Fiscal policy

Journal Article

This paper reports on recent work on improving the effectiveness of aid allocations, and extends the scope of analysis beyond the aid-policy-growth-poverty linkages to include three new elements: a broader range of poverty-relevant objectives and...

• Democracy
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Economic growth

Working Paper

This paper models transnational terrorism as a three-way strategic interaction involving a government that faces armed opposition at home, which may spill over in the form of acts of terrorism by the state’s opponents against the government’s...

• Conflict management
• Game theory
• Social conflict

Working Paper

The promotion of human welfare is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges of economic development. To achieve this, many developing countries adopted trade liberalisation in the late 1980s, premised on the theoretical evidence based on the...

• Economic development
• Free trade
• Public welfare

Working Paper

This paper analyses the relationship between income inequality and growth in transition economies. The distinct and complex dynamics adherent to these economies lead to the proposition of new econometric models in the paper. However, empirical...

• Econometric models
• Economic development
• Equality and inequality

Working Paper

This paper investigates the process of adjustment in employment. A dynamic model is applied to a panel of six Tunisian manufacturing industries observed over the period 1971–96. The adjustment process is industry and time specific. The adjustment...

• Commercial policy
• Labour demand
• Manufacturing

Working Paper

This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show that causality...

• International trade
• Labour market
• Manufacturing

Working Paper

This paper explores pitfalls in regression-based inequality decompositions. A simple procedure is developed for rectifying these pitfalls. The procedure does not impose any restrictions on the underlying regression model and it can be applied to any...

• Equality and inequality
• Income distribution
• Index numbers (Economics)