Join the networkFilter by...
Reset all
Publications (8871)
Book Chapter
– The Playing out of Aid Nurtured Ideals in Rwanda and Cambodia
From the book:
Fragile Aid
Book Chapter
From the book:
Fragile Aid
Book Chapter
From the book:
Fragile Aid
– The Global Agenda
The reform of the international financial and tax systems has been at the center of global debates in recent years—in the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the G20. The fourth United Nations Conference on Financing for Development that will take place in...
– Development Cooperation in Weak States and Conflict Contexts
ESTIMATED FOR OPEN ACCESS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON 3 APRIL 2025 | An important question for the future of aid concerns its role in weak states and conflict contexts. While considerable research points to a mixed record of effectiveness in these contexts, the imperative of external support for...
With just days to go before the rescheduled 2025 Budget Speech, South Africa faces a ZAR 60 billion revenue shortfall amid slowing economic growth and diminishing international aid. The initial proposal to increase VAT from 15% to 17% met sharp opposition, prompting an unprecedented postponement...
The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action set ambitious goals for equality, development, and peace for women worldwide. Endorsed by 189 countries, it reaffirmed that women’s rights are human rights and called for their full recognition and protection at every stage of life. Nearly 30...
Working Paper
pdf
– Mexico and United States compared
Building upon a multisectoral framework in light of the Kuznetsian paradigm, this paper analyses the relationship between structural transformation and income inequality. Empirical evidence is drawn using a large census dataset consisting of more than 22 million individuals from Mexico and the...
Working Paper
pdf
– History, structure, and potential effectiveness
This study assesses the effectiveness of Mozambique's flagship social pension programme, the elderly component of the Programa de Subsídio Social Básico (PSSB). Focusing on three key criteria—programme targeting, reliability, and materiality—we combine administrative data on the universe of...
Working Paper
pdf
– Experimental evidence on preferences for redistribution in Mozambique and Viet Nam
Knowledge of the factors driving people’s views on redistribution in the Global South remains limited. While these societies occupy top positions in inequality rankings, redistribution levels tend to be lower. We combine survey and experimental data from Mozambique and Viet Nam to test whether...
Working Paper
pdf
The effects of minimum wages on workers and firms depend on enforcement and compliance. While most research examines local determinants, this paper explores whether international market enforcement influences minimum wage impacts. In South Africa farmers exporting to the EU must comply with private...
South Africa’s energy sector is undergoing a transformation. The suspension of load shedding—planned, rolling power outages to prevent grid collapse — for over 300 days signals progress in stabilizing electricity supply. However, rising electricity prices and deep-rooted structural issues overshadow...
Wage inequality in India has declined over the past two decades. This article examines the role of rising minimum wages in driving this trend. Exploiting state-level variations in legislative minimum wage changes, it finds that minimum wage increases account for 26% of the decline in wage inequality...
– O ‘elevador social’ está avariado?
Um estudo recente fornece novas perspectivas sobre a mobilidade social intergeracional em Moçambique, com foco na educação e ocupação, bem como no bem-estar multidimensional e subjectivo. Esta análise acrescenta uma perspectiva importante às avaliações nacionais existentes sobre pobreza e bem-estar...
– Is the social elevator broken?
A recent study provides new insights into intergenerational social mobility in Mozambique, focusing on education and occupation, as well as multidimensional and subjective well-being. This adds an important perspective to existing national poverty and well-being assessments. While progress is found...
– Tendências, Desafios e Oportunidades
Este relatório analisa as tendências, desafios e oportunidades no sector agrícola de Moçambique entre 2002 e 2020, com especial enfoque na agricultura familiar. Baseia-se num conjunto de dados inovador, produzido no âmbito do programa Crescimento Inclusivo em Moçambique (IGM), que compila 11...
– Trends, challenges, and opportunities
This report examines the trends, challenges, and opportunities in Mozambique’s agricultural sector from 2002 to 2020, with a particular emphasis on smallholder farming. It is based on a novel dataset produced under the Inclusive growth in Mozambique (IGM) programme compiling 11 agricultural surveys...
Agriculture has long been the backbone of Mozambique’s economy. Over 70% of the population relies on this sector for their livelihoods, contributing 23% to the nation's GDP. Despite its critical role, Mozambique faces significant challenges in boosting agricultural productivity to propel the economy...
– Informações do Inquérito sobre as Vidas Vulneráveis de 2024
Este relatório resulta de uma análise da mobilidade social intergeracional em Moçambique utilizando dados recolhidos em seis postos administrativos de quatro províncias (Maputo, Zambézia, Sofala e Nampula) no âmbito do Inquérito às Vidas Vulneráveis (VLS).Este inquérito foi realizado no âmbito do...
– Insights from the Vulnerable Lives Survey 2024
This report is the result of an analysis of intergenerational social mobility in Mozambique using data collected from six administrative posts across four provinces (Maputo, Zambézia, Sofala, and Nampula) under the Vulnerable Lives Survey (VLS).This survey was implemented within the Inclusive Growth...
In recent years, UNU-WIDER has partnered with sub-Saharan African governments to establish secure data labs that provide researchers with access to anonymized administrative tax data for economic research. Two notable examples are the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) research lab in Uganda and South...
Blog
Last week, we attended the 2025 UNDP Dialogue on Public Finance and SDGs, where we explored the most pressing topics regarding public financing for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Global South countries. The Zero Draft of the 4th Financing for Development Conference (FFD4)...
In 2025, UNU-WIDER completes four decades of work. Starting as a small think-tank in relatively remote Helsinki, it has grown into a global institute, with a network of scholars and practitioners that spans the globe. The original vision behind UNU-WIDER was to develop an institute with ‘a research...
Book Chapter
– A Global Look at the First Year of the Pandemic
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
– The Undermining Role of Vertical Health Policies in Health Systems
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
– Ghana's Struggle against Health System Constraints in the COVID-19 Response
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
– Pandemic Governance Across the Global South
SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION IN APRIL 2025 | We expect the state to matter in times of crisis to better provide for and protect their populations. But how is it, precisely, that the quality of the state matters? This book speaks to this question through comparative study of how diverse states in 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 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, where jobseekers direct their...
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
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 profitability of the firm. With...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from Ethiopia
This paper examines the role of social protection in mitigating the adverse effects of conflict on household welfare. We assess the impact of a graduation intervention linked to Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme, focusing on Amhara, a region severely affected by the Tigray conflict. Using...
Working Paper
pdf
– Insights for financial stability and monetary transmission
Aggregate consumption typically exceeds 60 per cent of GDP and should be pivotal in central bank policy models. Most use semi-structural macro-models, yet consumption is usually inadequately specified. We use a systems approach to estimate new equations for South African consumption, house prices...
Working Paper
pdf
Measurement errors in macroeconomic aggregates such as GDP have been widely lamented, particularly in low-income contexts. This study investigates the reliability of one component of national accounts, agricultural sector output. Focusing first on the case of Mozambique, we use a series of 12...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from post-war Zimbabwe
Literature on rebel governance has examined various ways in which rebels engage with civilians, build informal governing institutions, and exert social control during civil war. When rebels win, how does rebel governance affect post-war politics? This paper explores how varieties of insecurity that...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from macro and microdata, 1950–present
Since 1950, agricultural productivity has been increasing even as labourers leave agriculture. However, while average productivity of the sector has been converging, within-sector inequality has been increasing. Agricultural income inequality is still less than overall income inequality, but it...
Working Paper
pdf
This working paper examines Tanzania’s social protection system amidst growing humanitarian crises driven by climate change, health epidemics, and regional conflicts. It explores the social protection needs experienced in humanitarian settings, the challenges in implementation and expansion of...
Working Paper
pdf
– Distributional impacts of climatic shocks on household consumption in Mozambique
Mozambique is highly vulnerable to climate change. It faces frequent cyclones, floods, and droughts while having limited revenue collection capacity and social protection programmes. This paper assesses the distributional effects of climate shocks on household consumption and explores adaptation...
Working Paper
pdf
– The political economy of the Kuznets curse in Brazil
This paper proposes a novel assessment of the Kuznets curve for an underdeveloped country engaging in rapid late development. We mobilize new long-run data for Brazil, combining surveys, administrative records, and national accounts statistics, to compute macro-consistent income shares and other...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper examines the state and evolution of the rule of law in Mozambique, focusing on key dimensions such as voice and political participation, judicial independence and accessibility, corruption, access to basic services, personal security, and property rights. Drawing on Afrobarometer surveys...
After a temporary increase in 2020 due to COVID-19, global extreme income poverty is reportedly falling again, according to World Bank estimates. However, undernourishment is rising, and the number of people in need of humanitarian aid has nearly quadrupled since 2015. How is this seemingly...
Blog
As the development community rethinks how to improve the lives of people in low- and middle-income countries, so too must researchers and research funders. Unequal academic partnerships and weak data protection are undermining the quality of research and harming the welfare of communities and...
– The keys to structural transformation in African cities
Structural transformation involves the movement of workers from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors—often from agriculture to manufacturing and services—and is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth.Around the world, we tend to see urbanization and structural transformation...
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 socio-psychological and information-provision analysis for the case of Mozambique
Worldwide, enterprises are affected by disasters such as cyclones and floods. Despite these negative impacts, many do not prepare for future disasters. Research on pro-environmental behavior suggests that changing the factors influencing people’s actions can lead to changes in behavior. However, it...
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 paper uses survey and tax administrative data to analyse the effects of a sizeable employer-borne payroll tax credit for young, low-wage workers in South Africa. We find fairly limited impacts of the wage subsidy on the employment of young, low-wage workers relative to two comparison groups...
Journal Article
– Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique
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 platform for manual...
Journal Article
This paper investigates the impact of double taxation treaties (DTTs) on resource revenue mobilization in 91 resource-rich countries from 2000 to 2019. We calculate annual degree centrality indices to measure countries’ integration into the tax treaty network. The results of applying panel fixed...
Journal Article
The collection of value added tax (VAT) is essential for achieving domestic revenue objectives, yet VAT gap estimation is rarely performed in developing countries. This study utilizes innovative tax declaration and audit data to estimate VAT misreporting in Tanzania, applying a machine learning...
Inequality in Mozambique increased substantially between 1996 and 2023, with a large and rapid increase between 2010–2020 of nearly 10 points on the Gini Index. A change of even 2 or 3 Gini points often represents major distributional changes in outcomes across the ranked groups of a population. A...
An increasing number of Global South countries are now diverting growth and development spending to pay off insurmountable levels of external debts that ballooned as a result of a ‘polycrisis’ of external shocks from COVID-19, climate change, wars, and interest rate hikes. Upwards of USD 3 trillion...
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
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:
Resources Matter
Blog
The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Seville, Spain, will convene in 2025, providing a global stage for countries to assess and strengthen strategies for financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As part of the preparatory efforts, the co-facilitators of...
Blog
At the last meeting of the Community of Practice on Gender and Tax (CoPGT), held on 10th September 2024, the conversation focused on microsimulation models and their role in helping us understand the gendered effects of tax policies in the context of the wider fiscal system. As a community, we’re...
– What is on the agenda in 2025?
The forthcoming UN Conference on Financing for Development, set for mid-2025, continues a great sequence started in Monterrey in 2002, followed up in Doha in 2008 and in Addis Ababa in 2015. The preparatory process is in full swing, with a broad agenda captured by the conference’s Elements Paper...
COP29, which just concluded, gathered country delegations, observers, businesses, and NGOs for several rounds of heated negotiations and discussions. Since the groundbreaking adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, COPs have largely revolved around painstaking efforts to implement its articles...
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.
Microsimulation approaches to studying shocks and social protection in selected developing economies
In this paper, I calculate automatic stabilization in Ghana, South Africa, and Ecuador to explain how they cushion income amid income and demand shocks. Additionally, I stress-test fiscal policies within these countries to gauge welfare alternatives and insurance. Adopting a discretionary action...
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
– Ending Poverty while Protecting Nature
Almost everything that is essential to modern society—transport and power systems, buildings, machinery, and medical devices—depends upon metals, minerals, and stone as well as oil and natural gas which provide the energy for households and businesses and transport as well as widely-used materials...
Working Paper
pdf
– Insights from Tanzania
This working paper examines the prevalence of humanitarian crises in Tanzania, their role in perpetuating poverty cycles, and how poverty graduation programmes mitigate these effects by building the resilience of ultra-poor households. We utilize a mixed-methods approach, comprising desk reviews, in...
Working Paper
pdf
This study explores the social protection and humanitarian emergency nexus in Zambia. Drawing on 25 stakeholder interviews and relevant literature sources, it seeks to (i) identify the social protection needs experienced in the country in the context of different shocks and crises; (ii) elucidate...
Working Paper
pdf
– Lessons from Mozambique
This study investigates the contribution of Mozambique’s flagship social pension programme, the Programa de Subsídio Social Básico, to building resilience against shocks. Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach to bespoke survey data, we separate direct effects of programme transfers from...
Working Paper
pdf
South Africa’s grid remains unstable and characterized by frequent power cuts. Employing a generalized difference-in-difference approach, this paper examines the implications of South Africa’s electricity crises on jobs, capital investment, and exporting across manufacturing firms in the country...
Working Paper
pdf
Raindrop in the drought? Vulnerability to climate shocks and the role of social protection in Zambia
Zambia’s reliance on rain-fed agriculture makes its economy and population highly vulnerable to frequent droughts and irregular rainfall. This paper assesses the role of social protection, specifically the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) program, in mitigating drought-induced poverty and consumption...
Working Paper
pdf
– Theory and experimental insights from local politicians in India
Economic theory predicts that dishonesty thrives in secrecy. Yet, team-based decisions are ubiquitous in public policy-making. How does teamwork influence the tendency for self-dealings when public servants—both honest and corrupt—must work together to make decisions under the veil of within-group...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper exploits several waves of two major nationwide representative surveys to document the impacts of climate shocks on individuals and households in Zambia. We merge these datasets with historical precipitation and temperature data at the district level. First, we show the gendered effects of...
Working Paper
pdf
– A review of approaches and development implications
Nowadays, all policy makers must engage with direct and indirect carbon pricing issues. However, the implications of different types of tools and methods to price carbon and support decarbonization deserve further attention in view of their development implications. Two aspects—revenue recycling and...
Working Paper
pdf
Using panels of labour force surveys from Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and India and a recent work status classification, we provide an in-depth analysis of labour mobility up or down the job ladder. This classification allows us to observe job transition possibilities across six work...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from refugees in Jordan during the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper studies the social protection of refugees during a pandemic. A pandemic adds to the many existing challenges refugees face, creating a dangerous polycrisis. Drawing on detailed household-level data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees just before and during the...
Working Paper
pdf
This study examines the sectoral impacts of electricity supply shortages in South Africa, using the cost share information available from the 2015 social accounting matrix. A simulation conducted under each of two technological assumptions, Cobb-Douglas and Leontief, reveals that a productivity...
Working Paper
pdf
– Case of Russian–Ukraine conflict
The world has faced an increasing number of global shocks that have resulted in large and unpredictable changes in global prices, particularly of food. These increases, coupled with the negative impacts of shocks to economic growth, have had damaging effects on welfare, hunger, and diets. Future...
Working Paper
pdf
We find that women sorting into lower wage firms explains nearly half of the gender wage gap in South Africa, using matched employer-employee panel data covering the universe of formal sector workers. Sorting varies considerably over the life cycle: the firm-wage gender gap is negligible for the...
Working Paper
pdf
This systematic review examines the effectiveness of social assistance programmes in protecting households in Africa—a region highly vulnerable to climate change, conflict, and other shocks—during periods of crisis. Despite the significant increase in the number of these programmes over the past two...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from a large-scale public works programme in Ethiopia
We assess how one of the largest public works programmes in the world—Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP)—affected violent conflict and civil unrest. Using difference-in-differences methods and linking administrative and geocoded conflict event data, we find that the PSNP did not...
Working Paper
pdf
– Sharing prosperity globally and domestically
A major of focus of global development policy is the aim to achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40% (B40) of the population at a rate higher than the national average. We propose an alternative approach to assessing shared prosperity using ‘inequality lines’. Analogous to poverty lines...
Working Paper
pdf
– A 15-year appraisal of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme
We assess the impact of a large-scale social protection intervention, Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), over a 15-year period. We find that the PSNP had a positive impact on food security but inconsistent impacts on assets. There were positive impacts on fertilizer use, investments...
Working Paper
pdf
Climate change and violent conflict are defining challenges of our time. However, it is not yet understood how they interact in shaping human welfare and food security, how their interaction shapes gendered outcomes, or how social protection systems can mitigate their impact. To address these...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper draws on quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the patterns of structural transformation, the drivers and constraints of structural transformation, and how the configuration of power within the city and its interactions with national and city political settlements affects...
Working Paper
pdf
The economic literature has shown that exogenous transitory shocks affect education by changing the opportunity cost of children. We argue that this is only part of the explanation. When permanent, shocks may change contracts and the organization of labour by eroding the productive structure and...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from South Africa
This study examines the impact of tax incentives on charitable donations within South Africa, with a focus on donations declared on individuals’ tax returns. Leveraging the universe of South African tax administrative data spanning over a decade (2011–21), we apply the bunching approach to assess...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from Zambia's formal sector
Low-income countries face the combined challenges of climate shocks and limited domestic revenue mobilization, yet these issues are rarely studied together. This paper provides new evidence on the impact of climate shocks on firm performance and tax revenue in a low-income country context, using...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from Uganda
Aggressive profit shifting by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is a growing concern for domestic resource mobilization in developing economies. This paper evaluates the revenue and welfare consequences of a flagship tax avoidance rule that has been implemented in more than 45 countries to prevent...
Displaying 96 of 8871 results