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Book Chapter
– A global look at the first year of the pandemic
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
– The undermining role of vertical health policies in health systems
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
– The undermining role of vertical health policies in health systems
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
– Pandemic Governance Across the Global South
BOOK IN PRODUCTION | SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION FEBRUARY 2025We expect the state to matter in times of crisis to better provide for and protect their populations. But how is it, precisely, that the quality of the state matters? This book speaks to this question through comparative study of how...
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Seventy years ago, Simon Kuznets was immortalised by his finding that inequality rises first and then falls later—the hypothesis widely known as the Kuznets Curve. In a new UNU-WIDER project, we look at what one of the most influential papers in the field means for inequality and development today...
‘The Number of Countries with High Inequality’ is the World Bank’s newest inequality indicator, one which it says will guide work on its agenda to ‘end poverty on a livable planet’. The indicator uses a country’s most recent Gini score, classifying it as a high inequality country if Gini is 40 or...
Drought is a leading cause of persistent poverty and humanitarian crises among pastoralists in East Africa. In a new book in the UNU-WIDER and Cambridge University Press Elements in Development Economics series, we examine the evolution, evaluations, and growth of the Index Based Livestock Insurance...
Rising public debt in Africa, exacerbated by multiple shocks and limited fiscal space, poses a significant challenge to the region’s development. Half of the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are in debt distress or at high risk of it, as calls for international action, such as...
Effective social protection programmes that meet local needs can significantly enhance wellbeing and break the cycle of structural poverty among the poor and vulnerable. Measuring their effectiveness and understanding their impact is crucial for policymakers involved in their design. The Vulnerable...
South Africa's unemployment rate stands at a staggering 32.1%—one of the highest in the world. Coupled with an alarming poverty rate, where nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line, the socioeconomic landscape is dire. Amidst these challenges, the special COVID-19 Social Relief of...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Micro evidence from Colombia
A growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first study of the long-term economic legacies of rebel governance. This effect is...
Working Paper
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In this paper, I show that the trend in spatial inequality in Mozambique almost entirely explains the outstanding surge in inequality in the country over the past decade, as well as its decline immediately after the pandemic, in contrast to its secondary role in the earliest years. For this analysis...
Working Paper
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Tax revenues are fundamental to state-building and development, particularly in the aftermath of conflict. Through the lens of the recent post-conflict experience of Colombia, this paper explores the challenges of increasing tax revenues amid violence and illicit economic activities. We study four...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
COVID-19 pandemic, household welfare and diversification strategies of smallholder farmers in Uganda
Agricultural activities in many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are subject to various risk factors that the COVID-19 compounds. Earlier studies on the effect of COVID-19 on smallholders neglect the issue of comparison with non-farm households. The study uses micro-level household datasets to...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
After decades of war, Mozambique experienced sustained economic growth and poverty reduction from the mid-1990s. However, these positive dynamics started to revert from 2015. Meanwhile, inequality stagnated in the period 1996/97–2008/09, before markedly increasing afterwards. In this study, we...
On 25 May 2023, three-year-old Neyamiah James died after extended electricity outages in Johannesburg caused her home oxygen machine to run out of backup power. On 4 March 2023, Yengiwe Mthimunye died after being turned away from Waterval Clinic in Mpumalanga because of a power outage. Bhekisisa...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We investigate the behavioural responses of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates applying empirical bunching methodology to tax administrative data from Zambia over the period from 2014 to 2021. We find evidence for excess bunching at the first kink in the tax...
Mozambique ranks in the bottom 20 of the human development index, with nearly two-thirds of its population (18.9 million people) living below the USD 0.70-a-day national poverty line. Simultaneously, the country struggles to finance public spending and consistently runs state budget deficits...
Yemi Kale is the Group Chief Economist of the African Export-Import Bank. In this editorial, he reflects on the prospects for Africa’s future following the Afreximbank 2024 Annual Meetings, held in Nassau, Bahamas, on the theme of ‘Owning our Destiny: Economic Prosperity on a Platform of Global...
Blog
Critically examining the Global South’s proposals for international financial architecture reformsThis report offers a critical examination of the Global South’s proposals for international financial architecture (IFA) reform through a systematic survey and analysis of official statements delivered...
Blog
In recent years, governments worldwide witnessed a surge in debt levels. According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt reached a staggering USD 315 trillion in early 2024, with sizable increases in emerging market countries. This increase in borrowing, at least by governments, was...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Technical assistance and increased use of ICT in tax administrations hold promise for greater revenue collection. Yet, the evidence on how these activities work in the real-world circumstances of developing countries is scant. The paper attempts to fill this gap by evaluating an intervention...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
This study presents an empirical framework that explores the relationship between poverty reduction and changes in the production structure of developing countries. We use the new GGDC-UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database to measure productivity growth within sectors and structural change –...
Journal Article
The shale gas revolution in the United States induced an unprecedented commodity boom across northwestern India. Leveraging population-based discontinuities in the contemporaneous roll-out of India’s national rural electrification scheme, we show that access to electricity increased total employment...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
This study examines the trajectory of global income inequality since 1981. Commonly used (relative) definitions indicate a decline in global inequality since the late 1980s. Looking ahead, it has been intuited that the influence of China's economic development — and that of other rapidly growing...
Working Paper
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This study provides an introduction to major discussions and core findings on inequalities in Viet Nam, drawing on a review of recent research, consideration of how inequality is discussed in legal documents, and an analysis of inequality using household survey data from Viet Nam. Inequality is...
Working Paper
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The impact of conflict on taxation and development has long been debated. Most studies suggest that conflict will have a depressive effect on state tax collection, negatively impacting economic growth and development. After reviewing the existing literature, we argue for an approach that recognizes...
Working Paper
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The public-debt-to-GDP ratio in South Africa increased from 26 per cent in the 2008/09 fiscal year to 73.9 per cent in 2023/24, raising fears that fiscal policy is not sustainable. This raises the question: did the government take steps to arrest the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio and regain...
Working Paper
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Refunds are an essential feature of well-functioning VAT systems and take up a sizeable portion of government spending. In South Africa, refunds amount to 50 percent of gross VAT collection, representing a substantial transfer from the government to taxpayers that has to occur at relatively high...
Working Paper
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Violent conflicts act as disincentives for sustainable socioeconomic development in conflict-prone societies, especially in the Global South. Existing studies focus largely on economic, political, and social triggers of violent conflicts; cultural factors, while important, are often not considered...
Working Paper
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– The equity implications of taxing more to expand the South African social security system
In this paper, we use a static fiscal incidence analysis model to evaluate the poverty and inequality impacts of using fiscal policy to finance expanded social spending in South Africa. We assess three methods to enhance the social protection system’s equity objectives: increasing the size and/or...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from individual-level administrative tax data
We use individual-level tax administrative data to estimate personal income inequality among the tax-compliant population in South Africa over the period 2011–21. Our results indicate that inequality of this population rose slightly over the period, with the Gini coefficient increasing from 0.64 to...
Working Paper
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Legal identity is an important aspect of securing access to public services, such as education, healthcare, and social protection services, including child support grants. In the South African context, in the post-apartheid period, many poor South Africans benefited from well-organized civil...
– Confronting a new economic reality
The 2023 Annual Lecture was delivered by Pinelopi (Penny) Goldberg. She spoke about her research on the topic of globalization.As the title of the lecture implies, this study is about globalization in crisis. Readers are no doubt aware that recent years have seen significant shifts in global...
Blog
– Research and life lessons from Finland
Coming from a tropical region in India, the Finnish weather, with its sub-zero temperatures, were an unfamiliar challenge, but I was inspired by the Finns seamlessly navigating their daily lives amidst snowstorms and their incredible strength (a concept known in Finnish as sisu, loosely translated...
I first met Andrea some 40 years ago, in 1985, when he invited me to a conference at UNICEF in New York on ‘Adjustment with a Human Face’, a highly influential project led by Andrea (then Chief Economist of UNICEF), Richard Jolly, and Frances Stewart, and subsequently published in two volumes by...
As recent projections warn we are off-track to reduce poverty for the 2030 deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals, the pressing need for equitable tax systems takes center stage at the 28th WIDER Annual Lecture.Ultra-high-net-worth individuals pay less tax relative their income than other...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Many European countries introduced austerity policies to control rising debt in the wake of the Great Recession of the late 2000s. Recent research suggests that austerity fuelled political polarization, instability, and populism in Europe. However, the motives behind citizens' responses to austerity...
Journal Article
This paper examines labour market inequality in Indonesia and India, using a common conceptual approach that draws on a job ladder framework. In the framework, I differentiate between self-employment and wage-informal employment and between formal, upper-tier informal and lower-tier informal...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– New projections
In this paper, we discuss the literature and consider the historical relationship between growth and a set of poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality and access to clean water. We then...
South Africa faces a dual challenge of limited fiscal space—the need to raise sufficient revenues to finance public services—and high levels of inequality. One possible solution is to raise tax rates on the rich. If successful, such reforms could increase revenues and mitigate income inequalities...
– A guide for billionaires seeking impact
Where should billionaires spend their money if they want to make a positive difference? I spoke to the experts in our network and took a look at recent UN flagship reports to gain insights into this critical question.In 2021, Elon Musk made a claim on social media that he would sell Tesla shares to...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We examine how politicians and non-politicians in rural India respond to behavioural incentives. Using a modified dictator game, we vary treatments (and incentives) across the nature of interactions, the visibility of actions, and an upfront promise. Under anonymity, politicians and non-politicians...
It was with great sadness that we received the news of Giovanni Andrea Cornia’s passing on 10 July 2024. Giovanni Andrea Cornia was Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Florence, where he taught for more than 15 years. He was formerly the Director of UNU-WIDER, Director of the...
It is surreal, sitting on this side of history. Many who were involved in shaping the 2030 global development agenda recall the intense process and the renewed optimism sparked by collective action, especially with the adoption of controversial goals like SDG 16: Peace, justice and strong...
Working Paper
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Armed conflicts significantly affect the social and economic conditions of societies in turmoil, disrupting the normal functioning of local economies. This study seeks to delve into the repercussions of armed conflicts on the dynamics of local economies in Ségou and Mopti, Mali, since the conflict...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a firm‐level panel
In this paper, we use the new economic geography (NEG) framework to estimate the extent to which spatial wage disparities in the South African manufacturing sector are an outcome of economic forces such as market access. To test the relationship, we use the anonymized tax data on employers and...
Working Paper
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I study the effect of the 2019–21 desert locust outbreak on the intention to migrate among rural households and individuals in Yemen, as an illustration of the human mobility impacts of climate change-related shocks in a complex emergency setting. Using the first systematic household survey...
Working Paper
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– Insights from the Deals and Development framework
An important stylized fact about African economic development is the phenomenon of urbanization without structural transformation. This paper provides a political economy analysis of the lack of structural transformation in African cities, drawing on the Deals and Development framework. It argues...
Working Paper
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– What can we learn from past stateness?
Supporting state capacity is a priority for the international community, yet the record of internationally supported statebuilding to date has been mixed at best. A key question for continuing research concerns the factors influencing more versus less successful interventions. We show that the...
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Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach to addressing group-based inequalities. It is adopted in dozens of countries around the world in the areas of, for instance, university enrolment, public employment, and...
Working Paper
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– Analysing persistence of colonial legacies in foreign aid to Africa
For decades now, Western development agencies and donors have been castigated for their colonial biases in providing aid to Africa. It is well established that donors provide considerably more foreign aid to their former colonies relative to other countries in the region. However, what happens over...
Dr Miguel Niño-Zarazúa explores the complex effects of clientelism on economic development, state capacity, and governance, emphasising the need for nuanced research to understand these dynamics in the context of rising populism and autocracies.The intricate relationship between clientelistic...
– What does it mean and how much would it cost?
In a new UNU-WIDER paper, which provides background for this year’s OECD Development Cooperation Report, we take a closer look at the end of poverty, what it really means, what it would cost, and how a new approach can improve the tailoring of development cooperation to different contexts.To end...
As a young data developer responsible for mining and analysing the administrative tax data provided to researchers through the SA-TIED programme, I am acutely aware of the economic challenges faced by the average South African, particularly young people. According to recent data from Statistics...
In a new release for the UNU-WIDER and Cambridge University Press Elements in Development Economics series, I look at global capitalist economic history through a new lens. In the book, I highlight how the creation of, command over, and exclusion from knowledge is a critical factor explaining why...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
The study analyses trends in global income distribution since 1950 using a new companion WIID dataset with standardized country income percentiles. It investigate the robustness of these trends with respect to key data choices, as well as the degree to which the inequality trend depends on specific...
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This paper makes new estimates of the cost of ending poverty and the global distribution of both the cost and poverty itself. First, the paper discusses definitions of ‘ending’ poverty, arguing that there is an overemphasis (e.g. SDG 1) on the extreme poverty line which is insufficient for multiple...
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Why do some conflict-affected areas remain an arena of violent contestation of the state, while others transition to peace? I suggest that economic networks developed during intrastate conflict—i.e. wartime economies—give rise to continued pockets of insecurity. The significance of the wartime...
Working Paper
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South Africa frequently experiences rolling blackouts (‘load shedding’) due to shortfalls in electricity generation. This is a common problem across the developing world, and yet the developmental impacts of insufficient and unstable electricity supply, and the benefits of mitigating this, are...
Working Paper
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This paper critically examines the shortcomings of post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, arguing that an overemphasis on measurable results and causal inference led to overly narrow, community-driven development interventions that failed to appreciate the complex...
Working Paper
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Domestic resource mobilization has rightly been placed at the centre of the ‘financing for development’ agenda across developing countries. While much is known about the importance of domestic taxes in contributing to this agenda, little is known about the potential importance of domestic savings...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– An open repository on inequality and polarization in length of life (1950–2021)
Monitoring health is key for identifying priorities in public health planning and improving healthcare services. Life expectancy has conventionally been regarded as a valuable indicator to compare the health status of different populations. However, this measure is simply the mean of the...
– Journeys in development economics
‘What makes UNU-WIDER a unique place for researchers is the sense of community and the combination of academic rigour, policy relevance, and position within the UN system’ — Amelia Santos-Paulino, UNU-WIDER Alumni ‘UNU-WIDER always manages to bring together many perspectives from development...
In South Africa, the power grid undergoes rotational, scheduled outages—or rolling blackouts—most commonly referred to as load shedding. Load shedding is primarily a consequence of frequent breakdowns at the national utility. These are due to a combination of poor long-term planning, a lack of...
In 2024, central banks worldwide are confronted with the challenges of juggling inflation control, economic growth, and the preservation of financial stability. A new report from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) outlines many of the dangers the economy faces...
Blog
We are off track to end poverty. Despite remarkable progress over the past few decades, the goal of eradicating poverty remains elusive, and SDG1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere is out of reach. While more than a billion people have been lifted out of poverty, the pace has significantly...
– Lessons from Index-Based Livestock Insurance
This study outlines the origins and evolution of an international award-winning development intervention, index-based livestock insurance (IBLI), which scaled from a small pilot project in Kenya to a design that underpins drought risk management products and policies across Africa. General insights...
Journal Article
– Examining the role of conventional banks in deepening access to formal credit
Using a unique district-level panel dataset, we investigate the effect of banking system penetration on financial inclusion in Ghana. To purge potential endogeneity bias in the underlying relationship, we exploit a change in the policy environment of the Ghanaian banking system to instrument for...
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Political clientelism — which reflects strategic, discretionary, and targeted exchange of private goods and services for political support to the incumbent — has characterised distributive politics in the Global South for decades. The conditional nature of exchange between political parties and...
Working Paper
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South Africa’s current electricity crises have worsened, placing the country on an uncertain and turbulent economic trajectory.To identify the manufacturing sub-sectors that are most vulnerable to this crises, we use the input–output matrices for the period between 1993 and 2021 to develop a sub...
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African cities are increasingly seen as key to unlocking national structural transformation and inclusive growth, as they tend to host the majority of the non-productive and informal labour force; attract the lion’s share of domestic investment in non-productive sectors; and host different political...
Working Paper
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– What does the long-run evidence tell us?
There is a broad agreement that political and economic institutions matter for long-term development. Yet relatively little is known as to how to adopt good quality institutions and reform weak or poor institutions, for which one needs to know how institutions change. This paper provides a...
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– A combined principal components and clustering analysis
Better understanding of inequality, including its relationship to governance and other key outcomes, is relevant both to academic researchers and to policy-makers. Nevertheless, efforts to establish causal relationships empirically remain hampered by the quality and availability of data, especially...
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– Economic impact under the microscope
Rising levels of income inequality and tight government budgets have spurred discussions in many developing nations about how to appropriately tax high-income earners. In this paper, we study taxpayer responses to an increase in the top marginal tax rate in South Africa, drawing on exceptionally...
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