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Publications (334)
– Economic policies that could make a difference
Turmoil following presidential and parliamentary elections in Mozambique has been severe. Preliminary official results from the 2024 elections indicated a landslide win by the ruling party, Frelimo. These results are widely contested, with various reports of irregularities.Post-election squabbles...
Apesar dos esforços desenvolvidos a nível mundial para formalizar as empresas, a maioria continua a operar informalmente. Dados recentes de 2022 indicam que 8 em cada 10 empresas a nível mundial continuam a ser informais. Os defensores das políticas de formalização na Organização Internacional do...
Despite global efforts to formalize enterprises, the majority still operate informally. Recent data from 2022 indicates that 8 out of 10 enterprises globally remain informal. Advocates for formalization policies at the ILO and OECD argue that it benefits firms, workers, and governments.In Mozambique...
Effective social protection programmes that meet local needs can significantly enhance wellbeing and break the cycle of structural poverty among the poor and vulnerable. Measuring their effectiveness and understanding their impact is crucial for policymakers involved in their design. The Vulnerable...
Working Paper
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In this paper, I show that the trend in spatial inequality in Mozambique almost entirely explains the outstanding surge in inequality in the country over the past decade, as well as its decline immediately after the pandemic, in contrast to its secondary role in the earliest years. For this analysis...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
After decades of war, Mozambique experienced sustained economic growth and poverty reduction from the mid-1990s. However, these positive dynamics started to revert from 2015. Meanwhile, inequality stagnated in the period 1996/97–2008/09, before markedly increasing afterwards. In this study, we...
Mozambique ranks in the bottom 20 of the human development index, with nearly two-thirds of its population (18.9 million people) living below the USD 0.70-a-day national poverty line. Simultaneously, the country struggles to finance public spending and consistently runs state budget deficits...
Blog
– Dois poemas de Neide Sigaúque
Aqui não dá para dormir, quanto mais para sonharSou a Neide Sigaúque,mulher,oriunda do leito Austral do terceiro mundo,Moçambique, terra de boa gente.Nasci num país independente.Independente da luta de libertação dos meus pais,mas dependente de ajuda externa do ocidente.Um país com economia pendente...
Blog
On 15 May, poet Neide Sigaúque was commissioned to perform two poems on the themes of the WIDER Development Conference The world at crossroads – securing the future generations held in Maputo, Mozambique.One cannot sleep here, let alone dream I am Neide Sigaúque,A womanfrom the southern side of the...
Report
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This report documents MOZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Mozambique. This work was carried out by the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Mozambique in collaboration with the project partners. The results presented in this report are derived using MOZMOD version 3.0, which is part of 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.
– 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...
In Mozambique, analysing how and why food prices change is crucial. Understanding the dynamics of price formation is fundamental to mitigate the adverse effects of price volatility to the economy. Detailed data on the prices of key food items in Mozambique is, however, limited in both quantity...
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...
Working Paper
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– Does labour market information speed job-taking in Mozambique?
High youth unemployment rates and long school-to-work transition times pose a threat to low-income countries’ sustainable growth prospects. Using a randomized control trial experiment conducted in Mozambique, we find strong evidence that providing information on wages and unemployment reduces the...
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We examine the long-term impact of forced labour on individual risk behaviour and economic decisions. For that, we focus on a policy of coercive cotton cultivation enforced in colonial Mozambique between 1926 and 1961. We combine archival sources about the boundaries of historical cotton concessions...
Working Paper
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Budget reliability is the first pillar of Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA). In this study, we construct an expansion of the PEFA government response accuracy indicator and test its decomposition, with an application to the government budgets and state general accounts of...
Journal Article
– Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique
ARTICLE IS 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...
Blog
– Report from the 2023 IGM Annual Conference
More than 70% of the Mozambican population depends on subsistence agriculture. As such, the agriculture sector is undoubtedly of fundamental importance to the country’s wellbeing. It has enormous potential to reduce poverty, promote food security, and generate income and employment. Despite its...
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...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Mozambique
The political consequences of economic inequality have been debated in academic and policy circles for centuries. The nature of this relationship seems highly dependent on specific contexts, with empirical studies showing mixed evidence on how economic inequality affects voting and other forms of...
Working Paper
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Following the abolition of slavery, various forms of compulsory labour were adopted by colonial powers to develop their economies. This paper analyses the contemporary consequences of compulsory cotton production—a forced labour system that operated in colonial Mozambique from 1926 to 1961. During...
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– Evidence from Mozambique
Using a unique panel survey of final-year undergraduates at six of the largest universities in Mozambique, we study the wage premium associated with completing an undergraduate degree. Conditional on a very rich set of controls, including pre-degree earnings, objective measures of ability, and...
Working Paper
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– A bird’s eye view based on existing databases
Using publicly available databases and drawing on a wide range of indicators, this paper reviews the institutional performance of Mozambique across seven broad categories: rule of law and judicial independence; voice and freedom of expression/association; political participation; accountability and...
Working Paper
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– Examining socio-psychological characteristics and information provision
Worldwide, enterprises are hit by disasters such as cyclones and floods. Despite being impacted negatively, most enterprises do not prepare for future disasters. This study aims at understanding the determinants of enterprises’ disaster preparedness. It first examines whether specific socio...
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.
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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.
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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 Restricted Capacity of the Judicial System
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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.
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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.
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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.
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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.
– Institutional Causes
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
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.
From the book:
Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
– The Institutional Diagnostic Project
Few countries have experienced as many political and economic changes as Mozambique. A vast and diverse country, it faced a particularly difficult start after a long period of colonial dominance followed by a deadly war that formally ended only in 1992. However, despite impressive growth after multi...
Working Paper
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– A comparative perspective
We examine the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated tax-benefit measures in seven sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on the onset of the crisis.We evaluate impacts on disposable incomes, considering variations across income groups; assess the effectiveness of tax...
Working Paper
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– A social accounting matrix approach
This study makes use of Mozambican social accounting matrices (SAMs) for the years 2007 and 2019, which we compare to uncover structural changes. Our findings reflect the significant short- and long-term challenges that Mozambican policy makers face. Broad-based dynamic change and structural...
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...
– Relatório final
Este relatório documenta os principais resultados do Inquérito às Indústrias Manufactureiras Moçambicanas 2022 (IIM 2022). O inquérito foi realizado em 2022 no âmbito do programa Crescimento inclusivo em Moçambique (IGM) com apoio do Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros da Finlândia e Ministério dos...
– Final report
This report documents the main findings of the Survey of Mozambican Manufacturing Firms 2022 (IIM 2022). The survey was implemented in 2022 under the Inclusive growth in Mozambique (IGM) programme with the support from the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign...
Report
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This report documents MOZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Mozambique. It describes the different tax-benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model picks up these different provisions, and the database on which the model runs. It concludes with a validation of MOZMOD results against...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from an ethnographic study in Mozambique
This ethnographic study explores the implementation of bilingual education in Mozambique: how it is understood, adapted, and resisted by school directors, teachers, and local officials. Bilingual education uses local languages in early grades before a gradual shift into Portuguese, which most...
– Differences based on gender
A recent study examines how inequality is perceived among young adults in Mozambique and how perceptions of inequality correlate with different demographic characteristics, including gender. It focuses on how young Mozambicans view the disparities between rich and poor people and why. Additionally...
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...
Blog
Over the past few months, we have been carrying out extensive research in Mozambique as part of the Inequality and governance in unstable democracies – the mediating role of trust project. The research aims to understand the long-term impacts of cotton concessions —a forced labour system implemented...
Working Paper
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Different concepts of inequality lead to different positions in discussions about whether economic growth leads to increasing inequality. This study investigates how over 1,100 young adults in Mozambique perceive inequality and whether their perceptions are based on relative or absolute terms. It...
Working Paper
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– The case of post-war migration in Mozambique
Internal migration plays an important role in the economic development of individuals, their families, and their country. This study describes Mozambique’s most common migration patterns from 1992 until 2017 using data from three population censuses. We focus on the most important moves between...
Blog
– Key findings from the IGM Annual Conference 2022
Since 2016, the private sector in Mozambique has faced several external shocks, including terrorism in Cabo Delgado, Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Ukrainian conflict and its impact on commodity prices and inflation. What is the state of the Mozambican private sector today...
– The case of Mozambique
Designing and implementing public policies requires caution to guarantee the best use of scarce resources, especially in middle- and lower-income countries. One of the ways to achieve this goal is to simulate the potential tax and benefit impacts of different policies that are under consideration...
Working Paper
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We study the effectiveness of social protection benefits in reducing income and consumption poverty in five sub-Saharan African countries—Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia—in normal times and times of widespread economic crisis. Using tax–benefit microsimulation models with...
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Informal self-employed traders in developing countries are vulnerable to shocks as they often lack access to social insurance or formal finance. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these urban traders in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo. Drawing on longitudinal phone...
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This study investigates the short-term impacts of an aggregate socioeconomic shock on household food consumption and children’s nutrition using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique. In response to the economic downturn, households are expected to adjust their food choices both in terms of...
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This study presents and discusses structural features of the Mozambique economy through the lens of a recently constructed 2019 social accounting matrix (SAM). This is an important reality check of the SAM construction process since it brings together various data sources that are not necessarily...
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In this study, we explore the correlates of the employment gender gap among urban youth in Mozambique. Young people are confronted with simultaneous decisions about education, work and family life influenced by social norms around gender roles. Using data from a panel of individuals in 2017 and 2020...
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– 1996/97–2019/20
After decades of war, ending in 1992, Mozambique embarked on a path of sustained economic growth and substantial poverty reduction. However, these positive dynamics started to revert from 2015, with per capita growth rates getting close to zero and household real consumption reducing in all areas of...
Technical Note
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This technical note describes how the 2015 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Mozambique was updated. New Household Budget Survey data availability, changes in the economic structure as captured by the underlying Supply and Use Tables and National Accounts as well as the frequency of previous SAM...
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.
– 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...
Blog
– Experimental evidence from Mozambique
Digital technologies can be deployed to improve job search, but their effectiveness in practice is disrupted. This column uses experimental data to investigate the effect of a digital job-matching platform on the labour outcomes of young people in Mozambique. The ‘treatment’ of a text message...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from COVID-19
Digital labour platforms have grown five-fold over the last decade, enabling significant expansion in gig work worldwide. We interrogate the criticism that these platforms tend to amplify aggregate economic shocks for registered users (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.
– 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...
Working Paper
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– Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920–74)
The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the annual...
Working Paper
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– Experimental evidence from sub-Saharan Africa
Can digital labour market platforms reduce search frictions in either formal or informal labour markets? We study this question using a randomized experiment embedded in a tracer study of the work transitions of graduates from technical and vocational colleges in Mozambique. We implement 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.
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
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– 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...
Working Paper
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The subject of this paper is health and ethnic inequalities in Mozambique, with special reference to leprosy. It is argued that the health policies and strategies adopted in the colonial and post-colonial periods led to an unequal distribution not only of certain diseases but also of health...
Report
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View the latest MOZMOD country report here. This report documents MOZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Mozambique. It describes the different tax-benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model picks up these different provisions, and the database on which the model runs. It concludes...
Working Paper
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This paper estimates the causal impact of teacher content knowledge on student achievement in Mozambique, a low-income country where a large share of fourth-graders fail to meet the minimum requirements of literacy and numeracy. I use nationally representative data from the Service Delivery...
Technical Note
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Agricultural subsidies may have significant productive and distributional consequences, and policy-makers need to be able to assess these impacts as a part of the overall tax and benefit policy. Microsimulation models offer a tool for such analysis also in developing countries, but their coverage...
Millions of Africans lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but state social security systems were of little help to people who lost their income.This is the conclusion of a study conducted by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, UNU...
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...
The next decade is a make-or-break for the world’s most vulnerable countries. To tackle the unprecedented confluence of COVID-19, climate, and economic crises, new solutions are desperately needed. Scientific research is one key for finding long-lasting solutions. Least developed countries (LDCs)...
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...
In summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and avoiding societies from becoming more unequal. Now we are releasing a cross-country comparative study that analyses the distributional effects of 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.
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...
Working Paper
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This paper analyses the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in 2020 in a cross-country comparative perspective for five African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We first estimate the impact of the crisis on disposable incomes...
Report
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View the latest MOZMOD country report here. This report documents MOZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Mozambique. It describes the different tax-benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model picks up these different provisions, and the database on which the model runs. It concludes...
Working Paper
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This paper builds on a longitudinal school-to-work transition phone survey experiment to quantify the effects on attrition of communicating with participants. Specifically, we study the impact of sending topically relevant information on job market conditions via SMS at the start of each survey...
Working Paper
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– The Mozambican case
At independence in 1975, the Frelimo government took over public administration from the colonial system and started to transform it. The public financial management (PFM) system was adapted to the central planning and management of the economy in line with nationalist and Marxist-Leninist thinking...
Working Paper
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This paper explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role of systemic political instability and violence combined with challenges to state legitimacy...
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– The case of Mozambican firms
Using panel data of manufacturing enterprises in Mozambique between 2012 and 2017, we investigate how changes in perceived quality of governance are related to firms’ law compliance. Controlling for firm-level unobserved heterogeneity, we look at three aspects of governance and their components...
– Dinâmica da transição ensino-emprego dos finalistas do ETP em Moçambique
O Ensino Técnico-Profissional (ETP) é frequentemente visto como uma solução milagrosa que resolve questões que vão desde o desemprego juvenil até à mudança estrutural relacionada com o mercado de trabalho. Isto é particularmente verdade para os países em desenvolvimento com um ensino básico...
Displaying 80 of 334 results