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Publications (60)
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 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 exploratory note
This note explores the literature on the determinants of foreign direct investment and domestic savings. With respect to foreign direct investment, it argues that institutional quality is the key driver of the type of investment that is necessary for structural transformation. With respect to...
Journal Article
– Evidence from financial liberalization
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW This study examines the redistributive effects of financial liberalization, including domestic and external finance reforms, implemented in 64 emerging and low-income countries over the past four decades. To identify these effects, we employ a 'doubly robust' estimation...
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.
– A review of methods and evidence
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) constitute a major challenge for development in low-income countries, as domestic resource mobilization is imperative for providing crucial public services. This study focuses exclusively on the economic dimension of IFFs, thereby excluding topics as drugs trade, money...
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.
– India’s informal sector firms
Part of Journal Special Issue
What sustains informality
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.
Using a survey of enterprises in Myanmar, we examine demand for formal credit and the extent to which firms are self-constrained by not applying for credit or if they apply and are constrained by bank’s rejections. We have information about firm managers’ managerial capacity and risk attitude. We...
Journal Article
– Rapidly increasing top incomes amid low national growth in South Africa
Despite South Africa’s need for inclusive economic growth, we find that the top income percentiles continue to diverge from the rest of the income distribution. We compare household survey data and tax data (which, unlike household survey data, includes accurate data for the very rich) 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.
– The role of firm-level relationships for knowledge transfers in Africa and Asia
This study combines evidence from interviews in seven countries with (i) government institutions responsible for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), (ii) 102 multinationals (MNEs), and (iii) 226 domestic firms linked to these foreign affiliates as suppliers, customers, or competitors, 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.
Revenues from taxation gain in importance to finance economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. One obstacle to enhancing the willingness to remit taxes can be the extortion of bribes by public officials. Using micro-level data from the Afrobarometer, we show that petty corruption erodes tax morale...
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Public economics and development action
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 Division of Financing in World Bank Projects and Project Performance
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid Impact and Effectiveness
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.
– Investigating the qualitative-quantitative divide in Mozambique
Motivated by the siloed nature of much poverty research, as well as the challenge of finding inclusive operational definitions of poverty, this study reflects on the merits of seeking to reconcile economic (quantitative) and anthropological (qualitative) analytical approaches. Drawing on detailed...
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.
– Evidence from Tanzania
Do intergovernmental transfers reduce revenues collected by local government authorities (LGAs)? There is already a well-established body of literature in public finance, which argues that intergovernmental grants “crowd out” local revenues. Most existing studies, however, explore the fiscal...
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.
Most developing countries are increasingly depending on freshwater based aquaculture to supplement the declining catch from capture fisheries. Yet the competition between capture fisheries and cage culture for space, pollution generated by cage culture, and fish markets interaction effects are...
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.
Employment in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia has grown more slowly than GDP over the last several decades. This means GDP per capita is rising. Vietnamese policymakers, however, are concerned that ongoing structural transformation is creating too few jobs. We use data for seven aggregated sectors and...
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 Case of the African Development Bank
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid and 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.
The Herzer et al. (2014) comment on our article (Lof et al., 2014) addresses two issues. First, they propose various ways to circumvent our concerns regarding data handling in a paper by Nowak-Lehmann et al. (2012). We point out that under these new approaches the link between the empirical model...
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.
– A counter-argument to the recommendation in the Mirrlees Review
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 income tax framework. Contrary to the recommendation...
Journal Article
– Bangladesh and Pakistan since 1971
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid and Institution-Building in Fragile States
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Land and Property Rights
– An Empirical Analysis
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 consumption data, the relation between working hours...
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
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.
– A Research Review and Agenda
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
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.
– Evidence from an International Lab Experiment
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Improved household accessibility to credit is a significant determinant of intra-household allocation of labor resources with important implications for productivity, income, and poverty status. However, credit accessibility could also have wider impacts on poverty if it leads to new hires outside...
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.
In a dynamic panel data model allowing for error cross-section dependence, output volatility is found to impede sustainable development. Through a financial development channel (liquidity liability ratio), output volatility exerts a significant effect on depletion of natural resources, a key...
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.
– A Sceptical Assessment
Financial liberalisation is widely seen as key to promoting financial development and unlocking growth in developing countries. While this thesis has been backed by an extensive literature, we show that it rests on weak theoretical and empirical foundations. Data for Sub-Saharan Africa reinforce...
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.
– Introduction and Overview
It is clear that a lot remains to be learnt about the role of the financial sector in African growth and development process. All three papers in this volume focus on the existing consensus in the literature that there seems to be a positive relationship between financial development and economic...
Journal Article
The global financial crisis has emphasised the fundamental role of social protection institutions in developing countries. There is also growing evidence that countries with programmes focused on children have a greater chance of minimising the longer-term effects of the crisis. However, financing...
Journal Article
– Evidence on Land Use Rights in Vietnam
Studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both household and plot levels, we show that crop choice...
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.
– A Fourier Flexible functional form and Stochastic Frontier Approach
The Indian financial sector has undergone a significant structural transformation since the initiation of financial liberalization during 1990’s. It brought significant changes in the financial sector in general and banking in particular. While there have been significant changes in the financial...
Journal Article
In this paper we assess the IMF approach to economic reform in developing countries. The impact of IMF program participation on economic growth has been evaluated empirically in a cross-country literature, with little evidence of IMF programs having been successful. This suggests that a fresh...
Displaying 32 of 60 results