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Above or below the poverty line: Three key questions for understanding shifts in global povertyIn 2010 and the following years, there was attention to the fact that much of global poverty had shifted to middle-income countries (for example here , here , and here )...
COVID-19 Global poverty CrisisBlog
Advancing social mobility research: Where to start
Innovation in academic investigation and policy response is critical to addressing global challenges...
Social mobility labour market economics Inequality
Call for papers
WIDER Development Conference in partnership with UNIANDES: Reducing inequality – the great challenge of our timeThe deadline for submissions is 31 March 2022, 23:59 UTC+3
Journal Article
The macroeconomic impact of COVID-19 in Mozambique: A social accounting matrix approachTHIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study assesses the economic costs of COVID-19 and the state of emergency implemented by the Government of Mozambique...
COVID-19 Multiplier analysis Social Accounting MatrixRequest for research proposals
Detecting and countering illicit financial flows – second callUnited Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) together with the Development Economics Research Group at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH-DERG) invite proposals for papers examining the challenge of...
Journal Article
On the impact of inequality on growth, human development, and governanceInequality 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...
Inequality Growth HealthLearning
Industrial Policy in the 21st Century – the Challenge for AfricaUNU-WIDER is running its popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Industrial Policy in the 21st Century – the Challenge for Africa , as a self-paced course, with an instructor and regular opportunities to interact. This course is based on a...
Learning Industrialization Africa's Economic Development
Blog
Dual learning disadvantages in East Africa: And how to deal with them
Children from poorer families in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda face a double disadvantage in their opportunity to access learning: not only is the overall quality of education low in these countries, but they also attend relatively poorer-quality schoo...
Inequality of opportunities Sorting Variance decompositionWorking Paper
Hide–seek–hide? The effects of financial secrecy on cross-border financial assetsExcessive 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...
Financial secrecy Transparency Secrecy jurisdictionsWorking Paper
Whose intergenerational mobility?: A new set of estimates for Indonesia by gender, geography, and generationVarious scholars have estimated levels of intergenerational mobility in OECD countries. Fewer estimates are available for developing countries, where mobility arguably matters more due to starker differences in living standards...
Intergenerational Mobility Longitudinal data analysis IndonesiaJournal Article
Measuring global poverty before and during the pandemic: A political economy of overoptimismTHIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW. The contribution of this study is to question the ‘official’ estimates of global monetary poverty up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic...
COVID-19 Crisis Global povertyArticle
UNU-WIDER ongoing work on the effect of COVID-19 on the economies, states, and societies of the Global SouthIt is clear that COVID-19 will have serious implications for economies, states, and societies of the Global South. At UNU-WIDER we are reorienting our work to think through what those implications are and possible mitigation and adaptation measures...
COVID-19
Working Paper
The tax-price elasticity of offshore tax avoidance: Evidence from Ecuadorian transaction dataThis study leverages a unique data set on the universe of transactions exiting the Ecuadorian economy to estimate the tax-price elasticity of demand for tax-sheltering activities using offshore fiscal havens...
Tax evasion Tax avoidance Tax havensNews
Pathfinding new book on Social Mobility in Developing Countries out now
Economics social sciences Social mobility Policy Brief
Six sets of policy actions to promote social mobilityPromoting 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...
Social mobility Poverty InequalityBlog
The pandemic and Africa's social safety netThe COVID-19 pandemic has shown that African tax and social-benefit systems are currently ill-equipped to protect households from sudden income losses...
Tax-benefit microsimulation SOUTHMOD Sub-Saharan AfricaConference
COVID-19 and development - effects and new realities for the Global SouthSESSION RECORDINGS NOW AVAILABLE The COVID-19 pandemic has presented new challenges, and undone hard-earned progress on the pathway to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Blog
An African in Africa: New perspectives on travelling for research
Working for an international organisation presents a host of challenges, given the vast nature of tasks that one must surmount in a fast paced and changing environment...
Zambia Ghana AfricaWorking Paper
Donors for tax morale: Evidence from 34 African countriesDo aid projects affect citizens’ motivation to pay taxes? We address this question by combining fine-grained data on aid projects from AidData and survey data from the Afrobarometer for 34 African countries...
Foreign aid Tax morale State capacityJournal Article
Rural financial intermediation and poverty reduction in Ghana: A micro-level analysisTHIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | 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 financi...
Rural financial intermediation Poverty reduction WelfareBlog
Ending aid dependency: Taxation in developing countries can be improved through collaborationFinland aims to raise the amount of its development assistance to 0.7% of GDP, and this goal has good grounds. But how can we make sure that the countries receiving the donor funding will not stay dependent on the external aid for a long time?...
Tax compliance Tanzania Tax administrationWorking Paper
Industrialization in developing countries: is it related to poverty reduction?This paper proposes an empirical framework that relates poverty reduction to production growth...
Poverty Production GrowthBlog
Virtuous circles and downward spirals: The power of ideas & the limits of technocracy
What will it take to shake loose the distemper of our times, and initiate a virtuous spiral of renewal?...
Sustainable development Institutional quality Democracy
Working Paper
What works to mitigate and reduce relative (and absolute) inequality?: A systematic reviewOver the past two decades, research on the impacts of a diverse range of public policies and income inequality has seen rapid growth...
Income inequality Systematic review Tax policy