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Publications (221)
Working Paper
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We show that the Russia–Ukraine-war-induced changes in the international price of wheat affected political violence in Asia. Using data from 13 countries and more than four million cell-level observations, we show that a higher wheat price increases political violence in areas that are more suitable...
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Rising globalization has exerted a downward pressure on global tariffs, thereby eroding tariff revenues in developing nations. We analyse how gains from lowering import tariffs are distributed within the firm and the corresponding tax (base) implications. First, we study the effect of tariff changes...
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– The case of poultry in South Africa
Using highly disaggregated customs-transaction-level data, we study the importer price effects of tariffs in the context of preferential trade agreements for South African imports of frozen bone-in chicken. We focus first on the firm-level impact of tariffs on import prices. Findings suggest no pass...
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– Evidence and policy discussion
Offshore tax havens cause large losses of government revenue by facilitating tax evasion by wealthy individuals. This paper focuses on offshore tax evasion in developing countries and documents two empirical regularities. First, there is no clear development gradient in the exposure to offshore tax...
![Technology and inequality in the past and the future -publication cover. Features a laptop and pair of hands of which one is a robot hand.](/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_150x200/public/AL26.png?itok=bEJG1Fse)
The 2022 Annual Lecture was delivered by Daron Acemoğlu. His lecture challenged techno-optimism, which maintains that technological advances will ultimately benefit society at large, and discussed what the path of digital technologies and artificial intelligence imply for the future. Artificial...
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Uganda has one of the lowest corporate income tax collection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, while offering generous corporate tax incentives. It is unclear whether tax incentives achieve their objectives without primarily benefiting firms, potentially undermining domestic revenue mobilization and...
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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...
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We analyse how inward foreign direct investment (FDI) received amid ongoing violence shapes armed conflict. We argue that FDI affects patterns of violence by influencing the state’s counterinsurgency strategy. To prevent disinvestment, governments strive to capture territory linked to investment...
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– A neural network approach
Double taxation treaties, by assigning taxing rights to rival countries and thereby eradicating double taxation, aim to facilitate cross-border trade and investment. The eradication of double taxation is achieved through reductions in withholding tax rates on passive income in source countries...
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There is a dearth of evidence on the evolution of occupational health in the developing world and on the extent to which it has been influenced by (1) the pattern of structural transformation in these economies and (2) integration with global markets.In this study, I compile a rich database on...
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Sub-Saharan African economies have experienced accelerated economic growth in the past two decades. In this paper we study the impact of trade-induced structural change on employment and value-added shares in sub-Saharan African economies. We find that sub-Saharan African economies have increasingly...
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– Evidence from South Africa
How do states rebuild nations after a major conflict? Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) have emerged as one of the most common interventions to achieve this objective. Despite their popularity, little is known about their efficacy to foster reconciliation and nation building. We fill this...
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– Insights from Peru and Kenya
Illicit gold flows constitute a major development challenge for governments and a social responsibility challenge for the jewellery industry, which accounts for the majority of global gold demand. This paper highlights aspects of gold supply chains that lack transparency and may indicate junctures...
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– Empirical evidence from low- and middle-income countries
Digitalization and shifting patterns of globalization are fast changing the rules of the game for countries embarking on a path of industrialization. In this study, we empirically examine the impact of digitalization and global value chains on structural transformation using a cross-country panel of...
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– Evidence from the China shock
How does international trade affect structural transformation in developing countries? We use data on sectoral allocation of labour and value-added in 46 developing economies over the period 1995–2017 and exploit for identification plausibly exogenous variation in manufacturing imports from China...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– The future of structural change in the developing world
From the book:
The Developer’s Dilemma
Working Paper
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– Evidence from transaction-level data in Nigeria
Research on profit shifting by multinational corporations in developing countries is limited due to a lack of data. In this paper we use, for the first time, novel administrative data on the transactions of multinational corporations operating in Nigeria vis-à-vis related parties in other...
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Corporate tax avoidance hampers domestic revenue mobilization and, with it, the development of lower- and middle-income countries. While a wide range of studies has shed light on the magnitude of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the indirect costs of this behaviour is underexplored...
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– A gravity model approach to estimate international trade misinvoicing
Illicit financial flows have recently attracted the attention of academia, practitioners, and multilateral organizations who consider them harmful to economic development. Some observers suggest that many of these flows occur via the misinvoicing of international trade transactions. This study...
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Excessive financial secrecy facilitates illicit financial flows, which constitute a major developmental challenge for low-income economies and cause significant tax revenue losses for governments around the world. In this paper we estimate the semi-elasticity of cross-border financial assets to...
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There exist a plethora of developing country value chain studies based on a variety of methodological approaches, both in the academic literature and through policy reports. However, there has been little systematic synthesis of the findings and approaches taken in these studies. This study presents...
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– Implications for the AfCFTA
COVID-19 has created a trade crisis in Southern Africa, with a dramatic slowdown in cross-border trade. The crisis, which exposed weaknesses and deficiencies in the trade facilitation regimes, presents an opportunity for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to address and contribute to...
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– Does domestic value added matter?
Is the emphasis placed in trade and industry policy-making in developing countries on the share of domestic value-added (‘value-added ratio’) in exports consistent with the objective of achieving economic development through an export-oriented development strategy? This paper examines the rationale...
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– The case of Zambia and South Africa
The successful use of special economic zones as economic tools for export-led industrial development in East Asia propelled a wave of similar initiatives across Africa. In Southern Africa, Zambia and South Africa instituted special economic zones in their respective legal and institutional...
Working Paper
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Plastics are ubiquitous across the region and play an important role in multiple industries. Most plastic products are based on a value chain that is grounded in petroleum refining, posing an environmental challenge. Plastic manufacturing in South Africa suffers from the high cost of polymers as...
Working Paper
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– Firm-level evidence from South Africa
Using the South African Revenue Service and National Treasury firm-level panel data for 2009–17, this paper investigates how global value chain-related trade affects the export performance of manufacturing firms in South Africa. In particular, the paper uses extant classifications of internationally...
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This paper explores the potential impacts of the transition to a low-carbon future for the taxation of extractive resources. The global debate on climate change has firmly moved on from the question of whether countries ought to shift towards such a future to that of how they are going to achieve it...
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– Trade liberalization and the rise of populism in Brazil
This paper investigates the long-term impact of economic shocks on populism, by exploiting a natural experiment created by the trade liberalization process implemented in Brazil between 1990 and 1995. This high impact and low duration event generated a profound shock to the economy with, we argue...
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– Evidence from South Africa
Inequality has been rising in most countries for several decades, with negative consequences for social cohesion and economic growth. Substantial gender wage gaps contribute significantly to overall wage inequality. We look at an often-overlooked driver of gender inequality: international trade...
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– An integrated approach
In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research...
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– The future of structural change in the developing world
This paper traces a set of major trends and future scenarios in global structural change. It argues that across multiple domains of change, developing economies are facing novel constellations of lateness and prematurity in technological and economic development. The paper explores these novel...
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– Evidence from changes in the occupational structure of employment in the USA and Mexico
The decline of employment in middle-wage, routine task intensive jobs has been well documented for the USA. Increased offshoring towards lower-income countries such as Mexico has been proposed as a potential driver of this decline. Our analysis provides a unique and new approach to address the...
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Countries’ economic complexity, and the associated diversification and sophistication of their exports, is a key determinant of economic growth. Understanding how South African firms learn to export more sophisticated products is, therefore, an important policy issue. Using administrative 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.
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...
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– When manufacturing is jobless and services are tradable
Globalization and robotics (globotics) are transforming the world economy at an explosive pace since they are driven by digital technology that is advancing in phenomenal increments. This paper—which should be considered a ‘thought piece’—argues that the globotics transformation is likely to disable...
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When Gunnar Myrdal published his magnum opus, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, in 1968, he was deeply pessimistic about the development prospects in Asia. The fifty years since witnessed a remarkable economic transformation in Asia — even if it has been uneven across countries...
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– An Inquiry into the Development of Nations
Gunnar Myrdal published his magnum opus, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, in 1968. He was deeply pessimistic about development prospects in Asia. The fifty years since then have witnessed a remarkable social and economic transformation in Asia - even if it has been uneven across...
Working Paper
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– Empirical evidence from Indian manufacturing firms
This paper examines whether digitalization can be a driver of ‘upgrading’ in global value chains and help developing countries move into higher value-added activities. In particular, the paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of digital capabilities on product upgrading in Indian...
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
Regional Growth Opportunities
Working Paper
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Rapid population growth, urbanization, and income growth are triggering increased demand for high-value agricultural products across Southern Africa with scope for gains from trade and regional integration. We analyse the animal feed to poultry value chain in Zambia focusing on the industry...
Working Paper
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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
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Lessons Learned from the Greater Zambeze River Valley and Beyond
Part of Journal Special Issue
Climate Change and the Zambezi River Valley
Working Paper
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– Micro-Level Evidence
This paper studies individual-level labour market transitions and their determinants in South Africa during the zenith and aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis using 2008 to 2010-2011 panel data from the National Income Dynamics Study and matched cross-sections of the Quarterly...
Working Paper
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– A Worldwide Analysis with Emphasis on Morocco and Turkey
This paper examines the interaction of globalization through trade liberalization and climate change, globally with a special focus on Morocco and Turkey. We use the GTAP model, which is a global general equilibrium model, to investigate trade liberalization welfare impacts under climate change, and...
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Agriculture and food cultivation production remains a key sector in the Vietnamese economy in terms of productive activities, income generation, and national export earnings. Higher world market prices should therefore in principle have a beneficial impact on rural farmers. This is based however on...
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– The WDR+20 Landscape of Core and Supportive Functions
This paper discusses shifts in development assistance for health (DAH) since 1990, analyses the nature of the current distribution of funding, and considers future implications. Based on Jamison et al. (1998) and Frenk and Moon (2013), we introduce an ‘essential functions’ framework, which provides...
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– How Past Environmental Aid Allocation Impacts Future Climate Aid
In this paper we update previous work that categorizes foreign aid projects in terms of their likely impact on the natural environment. We then document trends in the global distribution of environmental aid over time and show that environmental aid has increasingly focused on global environmental...
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Globalization has led to a precarization of labour, which especially manifests in the unstable working conditions, a lower labour share in national income as well as in a growing income inequality, with the exception of some countries with high initial income inequality. The neglect of concern for...
Working Paper
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– the Case of Zambia
The global food price crisis of 2007/08 raised fears about the impacts of higher and more volatile food prices for the poor in Zambia. Like in the past, the implementation of the strategies to deal with the rising food prices, especially for the staple crop maize were delayed due to ineffective...
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.
Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around each crisis, and actions by the government to...
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– A Panel VAR Approach
The strong interdependence between the developed and developing worlds surfaced with the recent economic downturn. Due to the global character of the economy, the downturn affected not only the North but also the South. In addition, the Official Development Assistance (ODA) is subject to a pro...
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– Implications for Supporting Democratic Change in North Africa
The so-called ‘Arab spring’ in North Africa and the Middle East in early 2011 took many political commentators by surprise. It challenged international democracy support to learn from its own limitations while potentially offering exciting new opportunities. The global momentum of democratization...
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– Impact on Waste Scavenging in Developing Countries
China has undergone remarkable economic growth spearheaded by industrialization. Chinese industry demands a wide variety of raw materials in increasing amounts in order to manufacture all kinds of products. Industrial demand exceeds domestic supply for several materials. Thus, China needs to import...
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– A case study of Liberia’s telecommunication laws
The telecommunications sector in Africa presents many exciting prospects to international investors—indeed many billion dollar projects are already underway across the continent. Many of the continent’s current problems can be traced to the exploitation it has experienced whilst ‘doing business’...
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– A Comparative Analysis of Domestic and Foreign Banks
Utilizing the stochastic frontier approach, this study conducts a comparative analysis of profit efficiency and cost inefficiency of commercial banks operating in 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries by bank ownership (domestic bank, SSA foreign bank or non-SSA foreign bank), as well as by the...
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– A Latecomer Adjusting to Crises
This paper examines Indonesia’s industrialization performance and policies, including its latecomer status, its generally rapid growth since the mid-1960s, its pronounced policy and performance episodes, and its ambivalent embrace of globalization. Particular attention is accorded to the deep...
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– Improving Diagnosis or the Need to Shift the Understanding Urban Inequality from Fixed Enclaves to Mobile Gradients
Current urban interventions, particularly in cities in developing countries like Santiago de Chile, evidence major neglect in understanding the way contemporary living takes place and how it is changing under processes of globalization, global warming, technological advances, as well as specific...
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Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises—the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global trade. Its success contradicts its characterization...
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This paper first shows that important economic arguments in favor of the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis of falling terms of trade of developing countries have implicitly relied on the role of multinational corporations and foreign direct investment. As of yet, the relationship between the latter and...
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– Knowledge, Entrepreneurial and Political
International migration analysis often focuses on mass migration rather than on the international mobility of elites, which is the focus of this paper. The paper offers a three-fold classification of elites: (a) knowledge elites, (b) entrepreneurial elites and (c) political elites. We explore the...
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This paper calls for a fresh look at industrial policies in the light of recent trends and developments in the global economy. In particular, five new challenges and their implications for industrial policies are discussed. These have been neglected in the debate on industrial policy and include (i)...
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– Evidence from Bangalore (India)
This paper aims at economic analysis of economic globalization and urban growth of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, as they are related to ICT sector. Overall analyses offer new insights and evidences for ICT sector as a major contributor for degree of economic globalization and urban...
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– International Migration and the Global City
Cities are the focal point for the mobility of talents, located between the nations and firms, states and educational institutions. Shanghai, being regarded as the 'ultimate poster-child for the effects of globalization on cities and regions' by the BBC (2007), the city is argued as the best...
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This paper overviews the debate on the relationship between the measures of globalization, economic growth and pace of urbanization, and speculates on its impact on the quality of life and poverty in the context of Asian countries. After experiencing moderate to high urban growth for three to four...
Displaying 64 of 221 results