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Publications (66)
– Impact, Recovery and the Future
A key challenge for the post-COVID global economy is whether the disproportionate impact of the crisis on informal workers, who form the majority of the world’s workforce, will be acknowledged. Or whether harmful and negative stereotypes will persist.Today, despite the role of these essential...
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...
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Routes to social and economic empowerment
In recent decades, trends in female labour force participation rates have been very heterogeneous across developing countries, despite widespread economic growth, fertility decline, and narrowing gender gaps in education.However, globally, gender gaps in wages and labour force participation are...
– The Changing Nature of Work and Inequality
Developed countries have experienced a polarization in earnings and in employment, namely stronger growth in the earnings and jobs for the most and least skilled workers at the expense of those in the middle. This pattern has been attributed to differences in tasks—whether a given job is routine and...
– 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...
– Transforming Informal Work and Livelihoods in Developing Countries
Using a range of countries from the Global South, this book examines heterogeneity within informal work by applying a common conceptual framework and empirical methodology. The country studies use panel data to study the dynamics of worker transitions between formal and heterogeneous informal work...
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
The special issue contributes significantly to critical issues related to the nature of informal employment and its determinants, how informal firms can grow their business and productivity, and the effects of labour market regulations and social insurance policies on informality.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Vietnam provides a comprehensive analytic contribution to a crucial topic within development economics. Based on fifteen years of continued data collection and research efforts it brings together nine up-to-date studies on micro, small, and medium enterprise...
– Key findings from an extensive survey
This brief summarizes the findings and implications of a survey of the school-to-work transition by Mozambican university students. No research of this kind had previously been conducted. Over the course of a year and a half, university graduates were monitored in their transition to the labour...
– Inclusive growth trend of this millennium is over
After three decades of persistently high inequality, Brazil has been experiencing a downward trend since 2001, accompanied by a rise in household incomes. These trends lasted until 2014 when a major reversal took place on both fronts. Since the 1970s Brazil has been one of the most unequal countries...
Some questions have been present since the very first days of development economics but have gained increased attention in recent years: Has economic growth resulted in gains in standards of living and reductions in poverty via improved labor market conditions? How do the rate and character of...
– Results from a baseline survey
Before now, there has been no systematic study of the transition of university students as they finish their studies and enter the labour market. This Policy Brief summarises the findings of a baseline survey of such university students, who form the sample of a longitudinal tracking survey that...
– Three challenges limiting the potential for inclusive growth
Historically, the African continent has been largely dismissed as a case of regional economic delinquency, with the levels of growth necessary to reduce poverty and inequality deemed to be consistently unattainable. In the last decade, however, significantly higher levels of economic growth have...
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment...
– Creating good jobs in Africa
The prevailing narrative about growth and development in Africa has shifted dramatically. During the1980s and 90s pessimism abounded. Today, a more optimistic narrative of development in the region largely reigns. However challenges still remain. In particular structural transformation has been slow...
– Growth Traps and Opportunities for Six African Economies
Examining the economic forces that will shape Africa’s future Africa’s Lions examines the economic growth experiences of six fast-growing and/or economically dominant African countries. Expert African researchers offer unique perspectives into the challenges and issues in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya...
– Employment, politics, and prospects for change
The much heralded growth and transformation of many economies in sub-Saharan Africa over the last decade continues to receive prominent attention in academic scholarship and among policy practitioners. An apparent feature about this transformation, however, is that Africa’s youth appear to have been...
This special issue comprises UNU-WIDER research focusing on key governance challenges related to addressing gaps in urban service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa. First, due to decentralisation policies in much of Africa, the provision of services is often transferred to sub-national authorities. But...
– Policy Changes and Lessons
The book aims to document and explain the sizeable decline of income inequality that has taken place in Latin America during the 2000s. It does so through an exploration of inequality changes in six representative countries, and ten policy chapters dealing with macroeconomics, foreign trade...
– New Challenges and Emerging Paradigms
Over the last two centuries, the experiences of the first wave of industrialized countries in Europe and the US, and the more recent experiences of the East Asian Tigers, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, India, and Vietnam, have illustrated the transformative nature of industrialization. There...
Entrepreneurs are often adversely affected by violent conflict such as civil war. At the same time though entrepreneurs may contribute to or even benefit from violent conflict and other ‘destructive’ and ‘unproductive’ activities that limit economic development. Whatever the direction of causality...
– Multidimensional Perspectives
The 20th century was one of rapid urbanization—that is urbanization by urban growth, and by rural-to-urban migration. By the dawn of the 21st century, for the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population was living in urban areas. Demographic forecasts for the decades ahead...
Policy Brief
pdf
How does innovation impact on development? How, and under what conditions, do entrepreneurs in developing countries innovate? And what can be done to support innovation by entrepreneurs in developing countries? This policy brief addresses these questions and explains the relationship between...
Displaying 32 of 66 results