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Publications (1160)
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...
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...
Journal Article
– Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique
ARTICLE ON EARLY VIEW | Digital labour platforms have grown five-fold over the past decade, enabling significant expansion of gig work worldwide. We interrogate the critique that these platforms tend to amplify aggregate shocks for registered workers. Based on the universe of records from a matching...
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...
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
ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study investigates the effects of taxation on income inequality in an unbalanced panel of 45 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1980–2018. We use two-stage least squares and the instrumental variables quantile regression estimates. We find that taxation...
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.
– Experimental evidence from Mozambique
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study examines the impact of digital labor-market platforms on jobs outcomes using a randomized encouragement design embedded in a longitudinal survey of Mozambican technical-vocational college graduates. We differentiate between platforms targeting formal jobs...
Journal Article
– Evidence from India
This study analyses whether living in a locality with high crime against women affects the probability of early marriage — that is, marriage before the legal age of marriage of girls. Using a nationally-representative longitudinal dataset and tackling the potential endogeneity of local crime rates...
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.
– Resource rents, fiscal capacity and political institutions in developing economies
While it is recognised that the ability of states to raise revenues (i.e., fiscal capacity) is important for the provision of key public goods in less developed economies, it is less clear what its determinants are and what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural...
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.
– Supply vs demand factors
This study estimates the relative importance of alternative supply and demand mechanisms in explaining the rise of female labor-force participation (FLFP) over the last 55 years in Mexico. The growth of FLFP in Mexico between 1960 and 2015 followed an S-shaped, with a considerable acceleration...
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.
Terrorism elicits strong public reactions immediately after the attack, with important implications for democratic institutions and individual well-being. Are these effects short-lived?We answer this question using a natural experiment design and combining data on terrorist attacks in the United...
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 the Sena Sugar Estates, 1920–74
ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | Forced wage labour (FWL) in colonial-era Portuguese Africa came to encompass a majority of working age men and persisted until the early 1960s. On the basis of reconstructed financial records from the Sena Sugar Estates in today's Mozambique, we estimate the long-run...
Sustainable economic development hinges on the ability of firms and households to maintain growth and wellbeing. How have Tanzania’s firms and households performed in recent decades, and what policies can improve their resilience against future shocks?Firms that export are better able to sustain...
– Policy lessons for low- and middle-income countries
Despite advancements for gender equality in some spheres, labour market outcomes for women continue to be worse than for men. Gender gaps in pay, labour force participation rates, and measures of job quality are stubbornly persistent and continue to hamper women’s economic empowerment globally...
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.
– Theory and some evidence from India
Using the lens of a life-cycle model, we argue that an administrative failure of a wage payment delay in a workfare programme could adversely affect the welfare of the poor through two channels. First, it imposes an implicit consumption tax on the household. Second, it changes the status of labour...
Journal Article
– Exploring the distribution of women's work between income generation, expenditure-saving, and unpaid domestic responsibilities in India
Part of Journal Special Issue
Women’s Work
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.
– Mismatch effects and catch-up dynamics under a Brazilian college affirmative action program
Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing access to quality education for talented...
Journal Article
– The role of financial shocks and marital customs
Part of Journal Special Issue
Women’s Work
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.
Biased beliefs about future labor-market earnings are commonplace. Based on a longitudinal survey of graduate work transitions in Mozambique, this study assesses the contribution of employment mismatches to a large positive gap between expected (ex ante) and realized (ex post) earnings.Accounting...
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.
Heterogeneous impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes in an emerging economy
– Evidence from Indonesia
Part of Journal Special Issue
Women’s Work
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.
When seeking to increase their tax revenues, policy-makers face a likely tradeoff between decreasing personal income tax rates (making formalizing more attractive and potentially contributing to revenue) and alternatively raising tax rates (potentially slowing down the formalization of the economy...
Journal Article
– Insights from survey and tax administrative data in Zambia
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study examines how formal firms have been impacted by and recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, by drawing on two distinct but complementary data sources. This is the first attempt to use both survey and tax administrative data to measure the impact of the...
Journal Article
– The pitfalls of education reform during post-war institutional transformation in Burundi
In this study, we investigate the relationship between education reform, institutional legacies of inequality, and changing political institutions in a poor, conflict-affected country. Burundi experienced a dramatic change in ethnic and regional power relations after the 1993–2005 civil war. The...
Journal Article
– Evidence from Mexican municipalities
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
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 cross-sectoral analysis from a gender perspective
Mainland Tanzania has seen two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in its social and economic structures, whilst the country continues to grapple with persisting gender inequalities. This article examines Tanzania's social policy developments from a gender perspective...
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 an environment with extensive corruption where much of the population evades paying their full taxes due, we tackle the question of optimal taxation when constituencies with conflicting objectives (the poor and the rich) push tax policy in different directions. We think in terms of a government...
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 for clearer definitions and measurement
Elaborated in their current form in Busan in 2011, and reiterated in Geneva in 2022, the four Principles of Effective Development Co-operation comprise country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency and mutual accountability. Framed to guide more effective development...
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 explore the relationship between household welfare and informality, measuring household informality as the share of members’ activities (hours worked or income) without social insurance. We discretize these measures into four bins or portfolios and assess their influence on consumption, as a...
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 a top university in Brazil
Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university in Brazil that splits students into two classes, we apply a regression discontinuity design to study the effect of class allocation on academic performance and labor market outcomes. The last student of the first...
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 article is the first to provide estimates of how minimum wages affect worker flows and employment growth rates in an employment scarce developing country context. We investigate the effects of a large, exogenous increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa. We find that changes...
Journal Article
This study explores how competition-induced productivity gains from imports in intermediate producing sectors transmit through the supply chain. Based on firm-level panel data from Vietnam, we show that in addition to the productivity premium associated with importing intermediate inputs, firms that...
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 article examines the impact of foreign aid and taxes on government spending for 67 developing countries during 1980–2013 using dynamic heterogeneous (panel) time-series techniques. We find that spending, aid and tax ratios comprise an equilibrium (cointegrated) relation.On average, the aid...
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.
– Armed violence in post-war Abkhazia
This article examines the complex local dynamics of armed violence in post-war Abkhazia. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the Abkhaz participants and non-participants in this violence and a range of secondary materials, it adapts the conceptual and analytical tools developed in civil war studies...
– Earnings inequality and polarization in eleven countries
Concerns about widening income inequality within countries continue to gain prominence in public debate worldwide. In the last decade, attention to the concentration of income at the very top of the distribution (top 1%) has increased. This concentration largely originates from the accumulation 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.
– Measurement and concepts
This study proposes a new measure of Fiscal Dependence on Extractive revenues: FDE. The FDE estimates, simply, the extent to which extractive-producing countries can fund day-to-day government spending with non-extractive revenues.By focusing specifically on the fiscal aspect of dependency - and...
Globalization is in retreat. Trade tensions between China and the United States are escalating, as illustrated by bans to the trade of semiconductor chips. The pandemic exacerbated an already difficult economic reality, raising new concerns about the resilience of global supply chains. Further...
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.
– High poverty and low trust
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, sub-Saharan African countries faced the dilemma of how to minimize viral transmission without adversely affecting the poor. This study proposes an index of lockdown readiness, taking into account housing conditions and income security, and analyses how this...
Journal Article
We design a lab-in-the-field experiment involving naturally occurring groups operating in three South-African townships. We introduce an incentives-based mechanism named 'participatory incentives' consisting of monetary incentives that are awarded conditional on the group reaching a threshold of...
Journal Article
Globally, the largest 0.001 per cent of frms earn one-third of all corporate profts. Nonetheless, there is little understanding of how proft shifting difers across frm size. Using the universe of South African corporate tax returns and global fnancial accounts, we fnd that proft shifting is...
Journal Article
We investigate the relationship between business practices and enterprise productivity using panel data with matched employer and employee information from Myanmar. The data show that micro, small, and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Myanmar typically adopt only a few modern business...
There has been a revival of interest in the state’s role in economic development. Recent research argues that the most successful economies are those where effective states provide crucial public goods and services. The historical emergence of effective tax systems and the related processes by which...
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.
– Experimental evidence from an information dissemination intervention
This study assesses the impact of an information dissemination intervention on the local-level implementation of the rural public works program in India. One key feature of the intervention is to provide information to workers once their wages get credited into their accounts. Using administrative...
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.
– Experimental evidence from Rwanda
This study investigates the short- and medium-term impact of a randomized group-based early child development program targeting parents of children aged 6–24 months in a poor, rural district of Rwanda. This low-intensity, short-duration, and low-cost program engaged parents through sessions that...
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 Mozambique
We examine how returns to education have evolved in the context of post-conflict reconstruction and economic growth in Mozambique over the period 1996–2015. We show that private rates of return to education have declined at lower levels of schooling, but remained stable and possibly even increased...
Journal Article
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This article introduces the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset, which provides rich survey data from more than 12,000 respondents in Colombia. Our panel survey – carried out in two separate waves in 2019 and 2021 – is representative at the level...
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 Latin American countries
Part of Journal Special Issue
Women’s Work
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.
– Exploring a puzzling relationship in the early stages of the pandemic
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was wealthier countries with stronger institutions that suffered the highest numbers of cases and fatalities. Many weaker countries were instead praised for more effective pandemic response. What explains this seeming puzzle? We re-consider these...
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 political institutions and state capacity
In recent decades, there has been an institutional shift in the literature on authoritarian regimes, with scholars investigating the role of political institutions, such as elections and political parties, in shaping regime stability and economic performance. However, scant attention has been...
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 Australia
This study adds to knowledge on the role of politicians’ and voters’ identities in influencing policy-making in societies marked by ethnic inequality. The outcome we investigate is the initiatives and policies targeting Indigenous populations in the context of Australia. We ask whether and how...
Journal Article
– Examples from rational choice theory and behavioural economics
Using illustrations from research on inequality, this essay makes a case for ‘behavioural synthesis’, that is the reconciliation between neo-classical and behavioural economics. Focusing on selected theories of absolute and relative inequality, we first give a brief critique of utilitarian models...
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
Fiscal state capacity
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.
– Formalization of individual property rights on land and taxation in sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
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.
– On the role of legibility in tax state development
Part of Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
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
Fiscal state capacity
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
Fiscal state capacity
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.
– History, politics, and institutions
Part of Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
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 Rwandan case
Part of Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
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 origins and expansion of the income tax
Part of Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
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.
– Implications for sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue
Fiscal state capacity
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.
– Rules versus discretionary budgets
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
– How far are they being used in low- and middle-income countries?
We examine how impact evaluation (IE) and associated syntheses contribute to evidence generation in low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries. We interviewed over 50 individuals from relevant organisations and five LMIC countries and drew on data from reports and repositories. The number 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.
– Industrialization in the developing world
This study examines industrialization in developing countries. It introduces the GGDC-UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides consistent annual data of employment, real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 economies for the period 1990–2018. Regressions that control 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.
– So similar, yet so different
This study provides a systematic comparative analysis of seven common cross-national measures of state capacity by focusing on three measurement issues: convergent validity, interchangeability, and case-specifc disagreement. The author fnds that the convergent validity of the measures is high, but...
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 studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational mobility in India, using a nationally representative data...
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
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | 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...
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.
– Livelihoods and wellbeing in India during COVID-19
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This article studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in Delhi, India. First, the study finds that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points during the pandemic...
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 Ghana
In this study, we provide causal evidence of the immediate and near-term impact of stringent COVID-19 lockdown policies on employment outcomes, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home orders were issued and enforced in two spatially...
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.
Mozambique experienced important reductions in the poverty rate until recently, before two major natural disasters hit, an armed insurgency stroke in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and the country started suffering from a hidden debt crisis with associated economic slowdown. As the last...
– A clearer picture of informal work
Most workers in developing countries work in the informal labour market Lower-tier informal work leads to a dead end in the countries in this study, with little opportunity to move up the job ladder While those in upper-tier informal work are the most likely to transition to formal labour market...
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 plethora of work has been done on the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, virtually none of the previous cross- country macro studies have investigated the impact of aid on social cohesion. Yet, in order to promote the achievement of the targets in SDG 16, donors and global partners 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.
In this study, we develop an empirical framework that allows us to trace out a time path of metal prices. This framework shows that unpredictable shifts in demand, extraction costs and discovery of reserves, make estimation of the slope of this underlying trend an empirical question. Further, the...
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
Women’s Work
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
Clientelist Politics and Development
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 sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
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 view from below
This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy measures on livelihoods in urban South Africa. Using qualitative research methods, we analyse two rounds of semi-structured phone interviews, conducted between June and September 2020 in the township of Khayelitsha, Cape...
– Evidence from an international research conference
This policy brief draws on the studies presented at the International Research Conference on the Effectiveness of Development Cooperation on 17–18 November 2022, in Brussels, Belgium, jointly organized by UNU-WIDER and the European Commission (DG INTPA) under its capacity as the leading entity of...
– Findings from an international research conference
This policy brief draws on the studies presented at the International Research Conference on the Effectiveness of Development Cooperation on 17–18 November 2022, in Brussels, Belgium and jointly organized by UNU-WIDER and the European Commission (DG INTPA) under its capacity as the leading entity of...
Journal Article
– Industrial aspirations and reverse labour migration
The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterized the life of the working poor. This study explores this kind of reverse transition, that is, when the Lewisian dream of having an industrial job comes to an...
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 doubly false premise of rules reform
The Doing Business reports have evoked an intense policy debate about whether countries should simplify regulatory rules or make them more stringent. We argue that doing business in developing countries is based on deals struck between firms and the state, rather than rules. We show that there is a...
Journal Article
We examine the patterns and correlates of the productivity gap between male- and female-owned enterprises in India’s informal sector. Female-owned firms are 45 per cent less productive than male-owned firms on average, with the greatest productivity gaps observed at the lower end of the productivity...
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 Ecuador
By combining household survey data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic with detailed tax-benefit simulations, this paper quantifies the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax-benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks. Our results show a...
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 Mozambican job-seekers
Forward-looking expectations are central to job search but often inaccurate. To test whether public information can help correct beliefs, we embed an experiment in a longitudinal survey of Mozambican graduates. We quantify responses of own-earning expectations to information about peers’ current...
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 global microdata
This study investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from developing countries, we measure long-term trends...
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 a randomised controlled trial study
In this study, we use a randomized control trial to examine whether asking Vietnamese men to reflect on gender equality can reduce their gender bias. We randomly selected two groups of married men in four rural provinces and asked the first group to make comments on gender-related laws and the...
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.
– Social ties, clientelism and the poor’s expectations of future service provision
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
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
Clientelist Politics and Development
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
Women’s Work
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.
Empirical evidence suggests that the social effects of internal migration may be substantially different from those associated with the arrival of international migrants. In this study the author provides the first evidence of the effect of internal migration on crime with longitudinal data from...
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 Mozambican firms
In sub-Saharan Africa, many micro and small enterprises do not (or at least only partially) comply with official rules and regulations. Given that low compliance rates impede economic growth and human development, it is essential to identify mechanisms that can help improve abidance with laws. This...
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.
Between 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. We make use of a new international dataset on fuel riots to explore the effects of fuel prices and price regimes on fuel riots. In line with prior expectations, we find that large domestic...
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 study the impact of corporate taxes on firm-level investments and business activity by exploiting a 6 percentage-point reduction in the corporate tax rate in 2012–2014 in Finland. We use detailed administrative data and a difference-in-differences method comparing small corporations (tax rate...
Journal Article
– A decomposition approach
Redistributive systems in Africa are still in their infancy but are expanding in order to finance increasing public spending. This study aims at characterising the redistributive potential of six African countries: Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Africa.These countries show...
– Overcoming the developer’s dilemma
There are multiple pathways of structural transformation and different inequality dynamics of each. Rising inequality is not inevitable — policies make a difference. Broad-based economic development requires public policies to address any upward pressure on inequality. A different policy agenda 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.
– The case of Renta Dignidad
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.
– The role of trade and labour policies on informality
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.
– A study of interactions between formal and 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.
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.
– The nature of informal employment in urban Mexico
Part of Journal Special Issue
What sustains informality
Journal Article
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– Evidence from Mexican informal and formal workers
Part of Journal Special Issue
What sustains informality
Journal Article
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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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
What sustains informality
Journal Article
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Anecdotal evidence suggests that involving beneficiaries in charity decision-making ensures better governance processes. This study provides the first experimental test of the effects of beneficiaries’ participation in the decision of how to spend a charity's funds. We consider four different...
Journal Article
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– Equality of opportunity versus welfarism
A common claim in the policy discourse is that a government wishing to achieve equality of opportunity should use public provision of education for equalisation of opportunities rather than income taxation, which only equalizes incomes. We develop a framework in which the tax and education provision...
Journal Article
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– A cohort analysis
Female labor force participation rates have been stagnating despite rising female education in sub-Saharan Africa since the turn of the millennium. Using representative and repeated census data from a heterogeneous sample of 13 sub-Saharan African countries, this study analyses female labor force...
Journal Article
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– Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa between 2008 and 2017
Longitudinal surveys allow us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage determine present material welfare and economic upward or downward mobility over time. In this paper, we use five waves of panel data to empirically assess the extent and dynamics of poverty in South Africa between 2008 and...
Journal Article
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– From additive weights to minimal bundles
In the widely-used class of multidimensional poverty measures introduced by Alkire and Foster (2011), dimension-specific weights combined with a single cut-off parameter play a fundamental role in identifying who is multidimensionally poor. This study revisits how these parameters are understood...
– Policy options for a sustainable fiscal regime
This brief provides concrete proposals on how Zambia's government could create a robust fiscal regime to achieve a steady flow of mineral revenue and encourage increased local participation in mining — while ensuring environmental sustainability.Zambia has had many mineral tax regimes and mining...
Journal Article
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This study assesses the impact of COVID-19 on household consumption poverty. To predict changes in income and the associated effects on poverty, we rely on existing estimated macroeconomic impacts. We assume two main impact channels: direct income/wage and employment losses. Our simulations suggest...
Journal Article
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– A social accounting matrix approach
This study assesses the economic costs of COVID-19 and the state of emergency implemented by the Government of Mozambique. We use a social accounting matrix multiplier analysis to estimate the effects of the pandemic on the economy. Our simulations suggest that the Mozambican economy lost 3.6...
Journal Article
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We exploit the variation in admission cutoffs across colleges at a leading Indian university to estimate the causal effects of enrolling in a selective college on cognitive attainment, economic preferences, and Big Five personality traits. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that...
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
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– From Harambee to the Constituency Development Fund
Why does clientelism persist? What determines how politicians signal responsiveness to voters and exert effort towards fulfilling campaign promises? This article explores how state capacity, legislative institutional strength, and established ideas about what politicians can do structure the...
Journal Article
– An experiment
We propose a five-player common-pool resource (CPR) game with endogenous coalition formation. We show that the level of extraction from the CPR depends on the size of each coalition formed and on the final coalition structure. These predictions are tested in a laboratory experiment. We consider two...
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– Do urban agglomeration economies matter?
The effects of a rural roads programme depend on labour mobility, how the programme is financed, and agglomera-tion economies. If financed by a rural poll tax and cross-price effects and agglomeration economies are sufficiently small, the wage will rise, with some return migration. Taxes on trade...
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Inequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear evidence. This article contributes by taking stock and...
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This study analyses the relationship between temperature shocks and migration in rural households in Vietnam. To control for the potential endogeneity between crop production and migration we use monthly minimum temperatures in the growing season as an instrument of rice production. In this way, we...
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– Evidence from 12 low- and middle income countries
Gender gaps in labor force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs. We combine household survey data from 12 developing...
Journal Article
This study analyses the impacts of indirect tax benefits policy reforms on income distribution and poverty in Tanzania by applying a standard static microsimulation model TAZMOD v1.8. The simulations model two indirect tax reforms involving changes to the excise duty and value‐added tax rates on...
Journal Article
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In many low-income transition countries, where formal institutions such as courts do not function effectively, informal institutions are often used by firms to minimize transaction risks. We examine the role of informal institutions, in the forms of relational contracting and social networks, in...
Journal Article
– Evidence from offshore bank accounts
Do elites capture foreign aid? This study documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not...
Journal Article
– Evidence from rural Vietnam
The ethnic divide remains a persistent challenge for Vietnam. This paper explores one mechanism that could drive ethnic inequalities by analysing risk-sharing networks in rural communes. After finding substantial differences in size and composition between ethnic minority and Kinh household networks...
Journal Article
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– How much does sorting matter?
Inequalities in learning opportunities arise from both household- and school-related factors. Although these factors are unlikely to be independent, few studies have considered the extent to which sorting between schools and households might aggravate educational inequalities. To fill this gap, this...
Journal Article
– Empirical Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Firms
This article provides empirical evidence on the impact of digitalisation on product upgrading in global value chains (GVCs). Analysis is done for a sample of Indian manufacturing GVC firms in the period 2001–15 from the firm-level database Prowess, using the methodology of System Generalised Method...
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– India’s informal sector firms
Part of Journal Special Issue
What sustains informality
Journal Article
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– A political economy of overoptimism
The contribution of this study is to question the ‘official’ estimates of global monetary poverty up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue there is a political economy of overoptimism in the measurement of global poverty. Specifically, we show that the methodological and presentational...
Journal Article
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– Insights from the Hrishipara diaries
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor in a semi-rural setting in Bangladesh. We use an unusually rich dataset which tracks the economic and financial transactions of sixty poor and very poor individuals and their families on a daily real-time basis for 12...
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– The case of Kenya
The role of exports in promoting economic growth has been widely acknowledged. This paper analyses the link between exports, imports, and growth performance in Kenya using time series data. Despite trade liberalization and export promotion policies pursued over time, Kenya’s export growth has been...
Promoting social mobility is an essential task of development, and a multi-faceted one. Precarious livelihoods are widespread. Containing downward mobility is an important precondition for sustaining upward mobility. Policies of human capital development assist but do not complete the task of...
Journal Article
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– A micro-level analysis
The financial sector in rural areas, where most of the poor people in sub-Saharan Africa are found, has transformed massively in recent times, notably through the increased penetration of several types of rural financial intermediaries in addition to rural and community banks and microfinance...
Moçambique reportou o seu primeiro caso da COVID-19 em 22 de Março de 2020. As estimativas do PIB sugerem um forte efeito da pandemia, com uma redução de sete dos nove dos sectores de actividade analisados. No entanto, o sector agrícola – um dos mais importantes – registou um aumento de 9%, que pode...
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– The case of Indonesia
Discussions on the developing world's industrial policies have largely neglected the role of state-owned entities. This paper argues that the resurgence of state capitalism has been, in part, the response of developing countries to the recent pattern of structural transformation involving weak...
Journal Article
– Evidence from China
We investigate heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission of education and the impact on this of house prices. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we construct household history of property pur-chases and educational investment over the past 16 years with current filial...
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– Dead end or stepping-stone?
Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labor markets of many low- and middle-income countries. A key issue in this regard concerns the extent to which informality itself is a persistent state. Using panel data from Ghana, South Africa...
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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
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
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– Vietnamese in West and East Germany
Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
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– Fragmentation, complexity, and ‘in/visibility’
Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
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– The case of Vietnamese refugee resettlement in the United States
Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
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– National and subnational influences
Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Presumptive tax, a final tax on business income, was introduced in Uganda in 1997. It has been reformed several times since its conception. The latest reform in July 2020 sought to make the presumptive regime more progressive, simpler and fairer to small firms. The revised rates have however raised...
– Simulating potential Cash Plus reforms
A large share of the population in Zambia is living below the national poverty line, with most of them being extremely poor. In a bid to improve the social and economic situation, the Zambian government introduced the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme which provides cash payments to poor and...
Journal Article
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– Support networks and racial inequality in Namibia
Community support is a critical source to sustain livelihoods in the Global South. At the same time, these practices can exhibit unequal dynamics such as disincentives, hierarchies, or adverse inclusion of individuals. However, an understanding of such is primarily tied to the conceptual space of...
Tanzania, similar to most sub-Saharan countries, reported its first COVID-19 cases in March 2020. While GDP estimates suggest that the economy was less hard hit than in other African countries, some sectors have nevertheless experienced negative growth. Even with contained GDP contractions in 2020...
In 2020, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused an economic crisis that disrupted the Ugandan labour market. How large were the associated income losses across different industries and population groups? To what extent did the general tax-benefit system mitigate the adverse effects of the...
The first cases of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa were reported in March 2020, and the impact of the pandemic has since rippled through the world and Africa. In response to the crisis and similarly to many of its peers, Ghana has enacted a variety of containment measures to confront the pandemic...
Mozambique reported its first case of COVID-19 on 22 March 2020. GDP estimates suggest a strong pandemic effect, with a reduction in seven of nine business sectors analysed. However, the agriculture sector, one of the most important, experienced a 9% increase, which may have cushioned the pandemic...
Zambia’s economic growth has been flattening over the past decade. In 2020 economic prospects further worsened, following the onset of the pandemic, rising debt, and the Eurobond default. In this unprecedented scenario, there is the need to examine impacts on welfare and the mitigation role taxes...
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– A development perspective
This article reviews the recent literature on the developmental effects of resource abundance, assessing likely effects and channels with respect to key development outcomes. To date, this area has received less analysis, although it is relevant to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals...
Journal Article
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A wide range of evidence shows systematic differences in health status among social groups, which are associated with unequal exposure to and distribution of the social determinants of health (SDH). However, the role of these SDH has not been studied extensively in low-income countries, where most...
Tanzania is, together with Kenya and Uganda, one of the founding members states of the East African Community (EAC), a regional intergovernmental organization which nowadays consists of six partner states in the region. Since the revival of the new EAC in 2000, EAC Customs Union (EAC-CU) in 2005...
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We estimate the efficiency of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana, and investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local public goods and services delivery by MMDAs. Using data from composite budgets of all 216 MMDAs, we employ both non...
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This study shows that occupations in South Africa are segregated and stratified by gender. While some women (mostly Black and 'Coloured') overwhelmingly fill low-paying jobs, others (mostly White and Indian/Asian, but also Coloured) tend to fill higher-paying professional positions. This study finds...
Journal Article
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This study explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax-benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people’s earned incomes just before the pandemic (March 2020)...
Journal Article
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– Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
This study draws lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for the relationship between data-driven decision making and global development. The lessons are that: (i) users should keep in mind the shifting value of data during a crisis, and the pitfalls its use can create; (ii) predictions carry costs in...
Journal Article
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– Evidence from Ghana
Using household data from the latest wave of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper utilizes machine learning techniques – IV LASSO – that allows for the treatment of unconfoundedness in the selection of observables and unobservables to examine the structural effect of gender wage differences...
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– Increased gender differences in aggression and depression symptoms due to the COVID-19 pandemic burden in Germany
Gender differences (GD) in mental health have come under renewed scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. While rapidly emerging evidence indicates a deterioration of mental health in general, it remains unknown whether the pandemic will have an impact on GD in mental health. To this end, we...
Journal Article
– The Philippine context
What is the effect of gender priming on solidarity behavior? We explore a two-player solidarity game where players can insure each other against risk of losses. We test this experimentally in a developing country setting, the Philippines. We consider a treatment that involves reminding subjects...
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, including Morocco, currently record the lowest rates of female labour force participation (FLFP) in the world. These rates — between 20-30% in 2019 — appear substantially low in comparison to Western countries, but also compared to low- and middle...
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
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– Accounting for inequality changes in Spain during the recession
The author discusses a new approach which decomposes inequality into the contributions of population groups by income sources. The author estimates a matrix with rows and columns which indicate different population groups and income sources, respectively, with each element indicating the marginal...
Journal Article
– Mandated political representation and murders
This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral quotas...
– Simulando diferentes cenários para atualização e expansão do PSSB
O Programa Subsídio Social Básico (PSSB) é um programa de transferência de renda mensal, não condicional, por tempo indeterminado, com o objectivo de reforçar o bem-estar da população pobre e vulnerável. São actualmente elegíveis ao PSSB pessoas em extrema pobreza e vulnerabilidade e agregados...
Diversifying income sources is an important livelihood strategy for households in low-income countries. Having several sources of income helps in increasing total income, and in spreading the risks. New findings on the benefits of income diversification from Tanzanian households can inform policy...
Journal Article
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– Evidence from the Han and ethnic minorities in China
This study investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for...
Journal Article
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– Does the political regime matter?
Corruption is widely believed to have an adverse effect on the economic performance of a country. However, many East and Southeast Asian countries either achieved or currently are achieving impressively rapid economic growth despite widespread corruption – the so-called East Asian Paradox. A common...
The private sector and enterprises have a key role to play in the development of the Tanzanian economy. This Policy Brief provides insights and solutions that could offer business sectors the vital policy support that they need to develop and grow. Linkages with large firms provide a possibility for...
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– Bridging the Zambezi in Mozambique
Historically, transport infrastructure connecting the most agriculturally productive areas of Mozambique and the richer southern region has been poor. A primary bottleneck was an unreliable ferry service over the Zambezi river, addressed by construction of a road bridge in 2009. In this study we...
Journal Article
– An empirical analysis
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a close connection between inequitable access to health care, welfare services and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others have argued that democratic governments have generally failed relative to more autocratic ones, simply because...
– Simulações dos efeitos de uma pensão para cobertura universal de velhice em Moçambique
Moçambique apresenta instrumentos legais que visam directa ou indirectamente reduzir a vulnerabilidade das pessoas idosas. Com efeito, há cerca de duas décadas, o país aprovou através da Resolução n.º 84/2002 de 12 de Novembro, a Política para a Pessoa Idosa e a estratégia da sua implementação...
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– Evidence from Brazil
Traditional economic models predict rural to urban migration during the structural transformation of an economy. In middle-income countries, it is less clear which direction of migration to expect. In this article, the author shows that in Brazil as many people move out as into metropolitan cities...
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– Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Ghana
This study provides new evidence on the effect of shortening the duration of pre‐university education on long‐term labour market outcomes in Ghana, exploiting the education reform of 1987 as a natural experiment. Our results indicate that the drastic cut in the duration of pre‐tertiary education...
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– Characteristics, productive value and market constraints in industrial manufacturing
This study analyses the differentials of productive values in Vietnamese micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and how market constraints have hindered their performance. Quantitative analyses suggest substantial differences in value addition among manufacturing MSMEs, and the crucial...
Journal Article
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The canonical approach to analyse the poverty impact of growth is based on the comparison of poverty before and after growth. Measurement tools endorsing this approach fail to capture the different experiences of poverty dynamic in the population: there can be groups of the population made poorer or...
Journal Article
The Indian labour market is characterized by a high level of informality, with large numbers of workers in poorly paid ‘lower-tier’ informal jobs, and somewhat better paid ‘upper-tier’ informal jobs, which do not have the same benefits and security of tenure as formal jobs. We examine the likelihood...
– How can natural resources support inclusive growth in Africa
For a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. There is an extensive literature linking natural resource dependence to poor economic performance. One cause is that resource-abundant economies tend to...
Journal Article
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– Are LDCs being left behind?
The study paper provides a preliminary assessment of COVID-19’s impact on global poverty in the light of IMF’s growth forecasts. It shows that the pandemic will erode many of the gains recorded over the last decade in terms of poverty reduction. Our baseline case suggests that globally the number of...
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– Assessing the short-term impact on consumption and poverty of the 2015 flood in Mozambique
Mozambique is among the most disaster-prone countries in the world. A bigger than usual, and mostly unexpected, flood occurred in the central-northern region of the country in the first few months of 2015, causing huge damage to infrastructures. In this study, we use a nationally representative...
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We analyse the multidimensional wellbeing of children aged 0–17 in Mozambique and find that 46.3% can be considered multidimensionally poor. A substantial divide exists between urban and rural areas and between northern and southern provinces. We compare Mozambican children’s wellbeing with that of...
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– Method and Evidence from Micro-Data
This study uses a global dataset with information about 210,000 corporations in 142 countries to investigate whether tax avoidance by multinational firms is more prevalent in less-developed countries. The paper proposes a novel approach to studying cross-border profit shifting, which has relatively...
Journal Article
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Most developed countries have accepted, in principle at least, the 50‐year‐old commitment of contributing 0.7 per cent of gross national income to supporting the development of developing countries. But what if all countries made a universal development commitment, meaning a scaled contribution? We...
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Building knowledge about migration governance and policy in the Global South is a priority for research and policy. Migration is a defining feature of our time and one closely linked with processes of economic and political development. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target 10.7 prioritizes...
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– Insights from the sub-Saharan Africa experience
The COVID-19 pandemic poses risks not only for people’s health but also economic wellbeing. While the full socio-economic consequences remain uncertain, its impact on the labour market has become a key issue of global concern. Especially low-income earners performing jobs in precarious, informal...
Journal Article
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In this study, I quantify the contribution of a subpopulation to inequality. This is defined as the sum of the contributions of its members, with these contributions computed as the impact on inequality of a small increase in the population mass at each point of the distribution (using the...
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– New evidence on the relationship between structural transformation and inequality
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural transformation, being either structurally underdeveloped...
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– Structural transformation, income inequality and employment dynamics
This article focuses on structural transformation, employment, and inequality dynamics. The papers revisit in different ways the seminal works of the pioneers of what can be referred to as the ‘classical school’ of development economics. First, the work of W. Arthur Lewis, depicting the labour...
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Income inequalities and redistribution in China
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– Data collection and the impact on income inequality
Part of Journal Special Issue
Income inequalities and redistribution in China
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Income inequalities and redistribution in China
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– A comparative approach with India
Part of Journal Special Issue
Income inequalities and redistribution in China
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– 1988-2013
Part of Journal Special Issue
Income inequalities and redistribution in China
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Income inequalities and redistribution in China
Journal Article
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Using a representative sample of more than 5,000 Vietnamese enterprises, we explore the firm-level productivity effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The data enables us to create 12 quantitative CSR measures, which can be grouped into two broader categories related to management and...
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– Are factors outside individual responsibility persistent over time?
Not all sources of inequality in educational achievements are fair. But how strong and persistent is the burden of unequal opportunities that each person carries on in their life? In this paper, we define individual indices of the burden of circumstances, which measure the effect that the...
Much of the research on the impact of fiscal policy shocks on macroeconomic outcomes (e.g., fiscal multipliers) uses reduced-form modelling approaches such as vector auto-regressions to obtain empirical results. In a recent study1, we used this approach to estimate fiscal multipliers for South...
Despite the frequent use of fiscal policy for stabilization purposes, there remains significant uncertainty regarding the impact of fiscal policy decisions on macroeconomic outcomes. This impact is quantified by calculating fiscal multipliers. A fiscal multiplier measures the impact of government’s...
Journal Article
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– Evidence from Vietnam
Part of Journal Special Issue
Understanding agricultural development and change
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Understanding agricultural development and change
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
Understanding agricultural development and change
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 Vietnam
Part of Journal Special Issue
Understanding agricultural development and change
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 Vietnam
Part of Journal Special Issue
Understanding agricultural development and change
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
Understanding agricultural development and change
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 Vietnam
Part of Journal Special Issue
Introduction to understanding agricultural development and change
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
Understanding agricultural development and change
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
Understanding agricultural development and change
Journal Article
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– Learning from Vietnam
Part of Journal Special Issue
Understanding agricultural development and change
– Five key issues and solutions
Taxation, and public sector matters more generally, are high on the agenda for the international development community. This is clearly reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG17 stipulates the need for improving domestic resource mobilization directly, and most of the other SDGs...
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– Evidence from an insurgency in India
India has employed a variety of military, political and economic measures to combat the long running insurgency in Kashmir with little evidence on what contributes to stability in the region. This paper uses a variety of tests to detect structural breaks in the time series for violence over the...
Journal Article
We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment among childcare workers in Chandigarh, India, to evaluate discriminatory attitudes of the Hindu workers toward Muslim children. We use a third-party allocation game that controls for selfish payoff-maximizing preferences across the treatments and focus...
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– Direct evidence using transaction data
This paper provides the first direct systematic evidence of profit shifting through transfer mispricing in a developing country. Using South African transaction-level customs data, the author directly tests for transfer price deviations from arm's-length pricing. It is found that multinational firms...
Journal Article
This study re-examines the determinants of redistribution in light of improved data and methods relative to earlier literature. In particular, we use the latest version of the UNU‐WIDER’s Income Inequality Database to have the best available estimates of both pre‐ and post‐redistribution inequality...
The structural changes of the economy have been a significant contributor to Vietnam’s impressive growth over the past 30 years. Labour has moved rapidly from agriculture into manufacturing, with important improvements in livelihoods as a result. The burgeoning private sector played a key role in...
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– 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...
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External validity is a major challenge for experimental research. I offer a new perspective on this challenge, drawing on work on case studies and causal inference – the sort of material regularly covered in introductory methods courses in political science – to reflect on the use of experiments in...
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We extend the conventional framework for measuring segregation to consider the stratification of occupations by gender, i.e. when either women or men are predominantly segregated into low-paying jobs. We propose the use of the concentration curve to analyse first-order stochastic dominance, and...
Journal Article
– Evidence from Chittagon Hill tracts of Bangladesh
We evaluate a development programme with an important maternal health care component in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The region and its mostly indigenous people experienced violent conflict in the past and face a constant risk of recurring conflict. Given this fragile setting, our work...
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– The Case of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera Programme
This paper follows a quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of the electronic payment system of Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. The switch from cash payments to electronic payments delivered via savings accounts is found to have medium-term effects on...
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This paper uses national representative data from the Ecuadorian Family Expenditure survey to study the determinants of poverty and informality in the country, taking into account the two-way relationship between these two phenomena. The main contribution of this paper is to present new empirical...
– Actors, institutions and dynamics
Since the mid-1990s, there has been in Africa something of a ‘quiet revolution’ in poverty reduction strategies with the proliferation of social assistance programmes that entail cash transfers to the poor. The past two decades have also been characterized by a series of important political...
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– Women, Conditional Cash Transfers, and Paid Employment in Southern Ecuador
Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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– Evidence from the Lesotho Child Grants Programme
Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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– The Role of Decentralization
Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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– Who Benefits and Who Pays?
Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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– Noncontributory Pensions, Coverage Expansion Strategies, and Aging Patterns across Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Article
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Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
There is an increasing interest in the analysis of economic inequalities in least developed countries. This is not only the result of a general social preference for equality, but also the consequence of a growing sense that highly unequal societies may distort the functioning of a country...
Journal Article
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How do shifts in trade affect social protections for the poor? Although the fraction of the world's population considered the “extreme” poor has fallen by over one-half over the past quarter century, many of those lifted above the global poverty line remain vulnerable to shocks that could place them...
Journal Article
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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...
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Governments do not have perfect information regarding constituent priorities and needs. This lack of knowledge opens the door for groups to lobby in order to affect the taxes they pay the government. We examine the political economy of a decentralised revenue-raising authority in light of social...
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