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Is Mozambique prepared for a lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic?We calculated a lockdown readiness index for Mozambique and the results don’t look good. If lockdown policies are needed to halt the spread of the...
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Working Paper
Structural transformation, inequality dynamics, and inclusive growth in BangladeshThe Bangladesh economy has undergone significant structural changes over the last four decades. The share of agriculture in GDP has declined, while the significance of industry and service sectors has increased. These structural changes have been...
Working Paper
Estimating the distribution of household wealth in South AfricaThis paper estimates the distribution of personal wealth in South Africa by combining tax microdata, household surveys, and macroeconomic balance sheet statistics. We systematically compare estimates of the wealth distribution obtained by direct...
Blog
Age composition of population and Covid-19The novel Covid-19 is affecting the advanced countries in the Western Hemisphere disproportionately more than developing countries. In this post, Basu...
Working Paper
Misinformed, mismatched, or misled?Inaccurate expectations of future wages are found in many contexts. Yet, existing studies overwhelmingly refer to high-income countries, and there is little evidence regarding the sources of expectational errors.Based on a longitudinal survey of...
Working Paper
Benign growthBetween 1981 and 2017, real gross domestic product in Thailand grew at an average annual rate of 5.7 per cent. Agricultural output grew more slowly than industry or services, and its gross domestic product share consequently declined. Industry’s...
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in AsiaSeveral countries have enacted lockdown measures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect their health systems and reduce the number of mortalities. One of the most extreme national lockdown measures has been taken by the government of India...
Working Paper
The energy transition in AsiaThis paper provides an overview of the energy transition in Asia. It sets out the underlying drivers and how these set energy transition priorities in China, India, and South East Asia. It particularly describes the role of (liquefied) natural gas in...
Working Paper
Exclusive growth?Despite South Africa’s need for inclusive economic growth, we find that the income trajectories of the rich continue to diverge from the rest of the income distribution. We combine household survey data and tax data (which, unlike household survey...
Working Paper
Depreciation allowances in South AfricaNowadays, tax depreciation allowances are used less as instruments of macroeconomic stabilization and more as long-term measures to stimulate investment. This paper tabulates the types of accelerated depreciation allowances in South Africa and...
Blog
How do we live with corona?People who live through extreme events are, often deeply, altered by the experiences they have. Even when those experiences take place predominantly...
Working Paper
Structural transformation, inequality, and inclusive growth in South AfricaThis paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before...
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in AfricaWhat has the government of South Africa done with respect to COVID-19 measures of mitigation and suppression? The first COVID-19 positive case was confirmed on 5 March 2020. Just ten days later, South Africa had 61 positive cases and President...
Blog
How Africa can fight the pandemic
The response to Africa’s COVID-19 plight must be swift and at scale rather than too little, too late. In a world short of progressive global...
Working Paper
Separating employment effects into job destruction and job creationThis paper presents new evidence on the employment effects of a large increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa using anonymized tax data. We add to the minimum wage literature by differentiating employment effects resulting from the...
Blog
Migrant workers in the Covid-19 pandemicMillions of migrant workers around the world provide valuable income for their families and contribute more broadly to the economies of both their...
Working Paper
Explaining the Migration of Stocks from Exchanges in Emerging Economies to International CentresWe study the determinants of stock market development and the growing migration of capital raising, listing, and trading activity to international exchanges. Economies with higher income per capita, sounder macro policies, more efficient legal...
Blog
The five criteria low income countries must have in place for lockdowns to workAs the COVID-19 virus has spread across the globe, developing countries are starting to enact many of the same policies used in China, Europe, and...
Journal Article
Development programs, security, and violence reductionIndia has employed a variety of military, political and economic measures to combat the long running insurgency in Kashmir with little evidence on what contributes to stability in the region. This paper uses a variety of tests to detect structural...
Blog
International tax avoidance and development
Corporate taxation is at the heart of economic development, and cardiac failure looms if international tax reform is not made globally inclusive There...
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in AfricaThe COVID-19 pandemic has now spread to over 180 countries, including several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.1 Kenya reported its first COVID-19 case on 13 March 2020. By 31 March the number of confirmed cases had risen to 59, with over 70 per cent...
Working Paper
The impact of the Employment Equity Act on female inter-industry labour mobility and the gender wage gap in South AfricaThe Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998 was introduced by the South African government to address the legacy of apartheid and ensure equitable representation of black people and women in the South African labour market. Although the impacts of the...
Report
SOUTHMOD country report Ecuador - ECUAMOD v1.5View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. The report describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of...
Blog
Is vocational education the fast track to employment in Mozambique?
Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is often put forward as the solution to youth unemployment — but to prove its worth, better...
Blog
An unprecedented threat requires unprecedented leadership: What is needed from global powers
COVID-19 is the greatest global threat the world has faced since the Second World War. It is not the deadliest or most infectious disease recorded...
Report
Baseline survey on the school-to-work transition of technical and vocational education graduates in MozambiqueThe research detailed herein was planned and implemented by researchers at the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), the Develop-ment Economics Research Group (DERG) at the University of Copenhagen...
Report
Inquérito de base à transição ensino-emprego dos graduados do ensino técnico-profissional em MoçambiqueA investigação aqui apresentada foi planeada e implementada por pesquisadores do United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), do Grupo de Pesquisa em Economia do Desenvolvimento (DERG) da Universidade de...
Working Paper
Informal institutions, transaction risk, and firm productivity in MyanmarIn many low-income transition countries, where formal institutions such as courts do not function effectively, informal institutions are often used by firms to minimize transaction risks. We examine the role of informal institutions, in the forms of...
Working Paper
Improving parenting practices for early child developmentThis paper investigates the short- and medium-term impact of a randomized group-based early child development programme targeting parents of children aged six to 24 months in a poor, rural district of Rwanda. The programme engaged parents through...
Working Paper
Wage polarization in a high-inequality emerging economyEarnings growth in South Africa displayed a U-shaped pattern across the earnings percentiles between 2000 and 2015, resembling wage polarization in the industrialized world. We investigate whether the drivers of this example of wage polarization in...
Working Paper
The relationship between transport accessibility and employment durationThe purpose of this research is to investigate whether transport accessibility influences the employment duration of individuals in South Africa. The South African Revenue Service’s IRP5 administration datasets, which indicate employment duration and...
Journal Article
The individual poverty incidence of growthThe canonical approach to analyse the poverty impact of growth is based on the comparison of poverty before and after growth. Measurement tools endorsing this approach fail to capture the different experiences of poverty dynamic in the population...
Blog
Who gets to work from home?: A suddenly relevant indicator of privilege and inequality in labour market outcomes
The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes an unprecedented shock for labour markets around the world. Non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as social...
Report
SOUTHMOD country report Uganda - UGAMOD v1.4View the latest UGAMOD country report here. This report documents UGAMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Uganda. The report describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model picks up these different provisions...
Working Paper
Weather shocks and child nutritionIn this paper, we examine the relationship between childhood exposure to adverse weather shocks and nutritional and health outcomes of children in Tanzania. Using household panel data matched with spatially disaggregated data on weather shocks, we...
Blog
Double dividends and mixed blessings: What would the pioneers of development economics make of new trends in developing economies?Today, we see clear trends in developing countries of a potentially troubling ‘new normal’ for economic development. We see tertiarization with rising...
Working Paper
Inclusive growth without structural transformation?Through rapid urbanization, Brazil—previously a country where most workers were in the agricultural sector—went through a strong process of structural transformation that lasted almost four decades until economic liberalization at the beginning of...
Working Paper
The effect of policy uncertainty on South Africa, SADC, and beyondThe principal contribution of this paper is to investigate the relationship between policy uncertainty, caused by recent developments in international markets, and firms’ trade margins for the largest economy in Africa: South Africa. In particular...
Working Paper
COVID-19: mortality, future years lost, and demographic structureCOVID-19 causes extremely high mortality among the old. This motivates a comparison of the losses of future lifetime years and future lifetime years of work ensuing from a hypothetical 25,000 excess deaths in Italy, whose affluent population is one of...
Blog
Artificial intelligence vs. COVID-19 in developing countries: Priorities and trade-offs
The rush to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the fight against the pandemic may be an opportunity for developing countries to accelerate the...
Background Note
Artificial intelligence versus COVID-19 in developing countriesIn this note, I will refer to current efforts to harness artificial intelligence (AI) in the push back against COVID-19, note its promises, limitations, potential pitfalls, and identify priorities for developing countries. Artificial Intelligence is...
Working Paper
Special economic zones in Southern AfricaSpecial economic zones (SEZs) in Africa are generally regarded as underperforming relative to their peers in the rest of the world. This study focuses on the design features of the SEZ in Africa that may help explain this underperformance. Literature...
Blog
Being the change you want to see
While growing up, I was troubled by the scale of the socioeconomic gap between the haves and the have-nots in the community around me. I saw cases...
Working Paper
Resource sector concessions and spatial development in Southern AfricaThis paper explores how Southern Africa can leverage its mineral resources to support growth and industrialization. It considers the aggregate and spatial effects of transport infrastructure improvements, and the relative benefits of financing these...
Working Paper
Earnings in the South African Revenue Service IRP5 dataThe IRP5 and IT3(a) tax data from the South African Revenue Service have been made available to researchers through a joint project between the South African Revenue Service, the National Treasury, and UNU-WIDER. In this paper, I explain how to use...
Working Paper
A comparative study of export processing zones in the wake of the Sustainable Development GoalsThe objective of this research is to assess the extent to which export processing zones in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe integrate the Sustainable Development Goals in their implementation and operations. We focused on four Sustainable...
Working Paper
Internet Use in Transition EconomiesThe purpose of the study is two-fold. First, it examines whether Internet usage converges across the geographical space comprising the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Second, it aims to expand the currently rather limited...
Research Brief
Spatial dynamics of firm productivity in South AfricaThe design and implementation of industrial policy should be closely linked to spatial considerations. Firm output and productivity are often location-specific, with factors such as the availability of physical infrastructure, proximity to sources...
Research Brief
Can trade in services bolster regional development in Southern Africa?Service exports are the fastest growing portion of world trade and now account for nearly a quarter of global exports. Tradable services contribute to economic growth and development by bolstering industrial capabilities, facilitating productivity...
Research Brief
The impact on jobs and earnings of offshoring in South AfricaThe success of an economy’s manufacturing sector is often critical to economic growth and development. As a major contributor to exports, site of innovation, adopter of international best practices, and engine of job creation, an internationally...
Working Paper
Childbirth and women’s labour market transitions in India (revised)The impact of childbirth on women’s employment has been discussed extensively in the context of developed countries. Constraints on mothers’ labour market participation and consequent fall in earnings are characterized as the ‘motherhood penalty’...
Technical Note
Deriving shocks to household consumption expenditures from the associated income shocks resulting from COVID-19This note, which forms part of a series of technical notes that complement Lastunen et al. (2021), reports the approach used to derive shocks to household expenditures from shocks at the individual-level labour incomes. Its structure is composed by...
Technical Note
Iterative proportional fitting for reweighting input data in SOUTHMOD microsimulation modelsThis note describes how the counterfactual datasets in the working paper by Lastunen et al. (2021) have been reweighted, for each country analysed, to the ‘pre-crisis’ time point of 31 March 2020. The procedure consists of five main steps. The note...
Journal Article
Does connectivity reduce gender gaps in off-farm employment?Gender gaps in labor force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs. We...
Working Paper
Gender and vulnerable employment in the developing worldThis paper investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from...
Working Paper
Debt-financed fiscal stimulus in South AfricaDebt-financed fiscal stimulus programmes directly stimulate aggregate demand through government expenditure or tax cuts, but their effectiveness is highly dependent on direct crowding out of private sector expenditure, spillover effects to the...
Working Paper
Diffusion of agricultural innovations in Guinea-BissauThis paper analyses the pathways of technology diffusion through social networks, following the experimental introduction of new technologies in Guinea-Bissau. In the context of an agricultural extension project, we document both the direct effects...
Working Paper
The afterlife of industrial workThe COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterized the life of the working poor. Exploring urban-to-rural labour transitions through a feminist political...
Working Paper
The changing nature of work and inequality in Brazil (2003–19)In this paper we use different sources of data on job task content to investigate the importance of occupations and the intensity of routine tasks embodied in them in explaining changes in employment and earnings in Brazil, in particular their...
Blog
Wasted talent – How COVID-19’s effect on the poor could make all of society poorer
The opening keynote of the recent WIDER Development Conference, COVID-19 and development – effects and new realities for the Global South, was given...
Blog
Staffan Lindberg’s keynote address is a wake-up call
In introducing Staffan Lindberg’s keynote at the WIDER Development Conference, UNU-WIDER Senior Research Fellow and political scientist Rachel...
Blog
Kanika Mahajan – IEA featured economist interview
Kanika Mahajan, a researcher engaged in UNU-WIDER's project on 'The changing nature of work and inequality', is the August 2021 featured economist of...
Technical Note
Full-year adjustment for modelling COVID-19 policies in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation modelsThis technical note presents a modelling approach used in Lastunen et al. (2021) where tax and benefit policies are scaled to reflect their actual duration during a single calendar year. It can be applied to tax-benefit microsimulation models...
Technical Note
Imputation methods for adjusting SOUTHMOD input data to income losses due to the COVID-19 crisisThis note sets out two different methods on how to adjust incomes in the microdata underlying the standard SOUTHMOD models to reflect a sudden shock, in this case the COVID-19 shock, as done in the accompanying working paper by Lastunen et al. (2021)...
Working Paper
Glimpses of fiscal states in sub-Saharan AfricaThere is a widespread perception that taxing in sub-Saharan Africa has been and remains fraught with problems or government failure. This is not generally true. For more than a century, colonial administrations and independent states have steadily...
Blog
Working together to better understand how COVID-19 affects poverty and inequalityIn summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and...
Blog
COVID-19 and the Global South — From crisis response to sustainable development
Around the world, the pandemic, and the measures taken to address it, have had far reaching effects on poverty, inequality, and governance. And even...
Policy Brief
Working Paper
What are the drivers of tax capacity in sub-Saharan Africa?There is limited research on the underlying institutional framework of tax policy and capacity: how tax collection efficiency changes over time and the importance of institutional factors in this process.This paper fills this gap by devising a...
Working Paper
An exploration of the association between fuel subsidies and fuel riotsBetween 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. We make use of a new international dataset on fuel riots to explore the effects of fuel prices and price regimes on fuel riots. In line with...
Working Paper
R&D (Re)locationThe paper builds a framework for the analysis of research and development (R&D) offshoring and outsourcing that encompasses several strands of the economics literature. It surveys the predictions from key theoretical models advanced in the literature...
Working Paper
Tariffs, productivity, and resource misallocationAn often-neglected potential negative consequence of tariffs is the impact they may have on the misallocation of factor inputs. Trade protection can provide space for domestic firms to increase prices and mark-ups, allowing low-productivity firms to...
Working Paper
The effect of fiscal drag on income distribution and work incentivesAlthough the effect of fiscal drag is well studied in the industrialized world, empirical evidence from developing economies remains limited. Against this backdrop, this study aims to explore the effect of fiscal drag on income distribution and work...
Working Paper
Aid and social cohesionA plethora of work has been done on the effectiveness of foreign aid. However, virtually none of the previous studies has investigated the impact of aid on social cohesion. Yet, in order to promote the achievement of the targets in SDG 16, donors and...
Working Paper
An assessment of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s tradeWe examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s foreign trade using quarterly trade data for the period 2019 to the second quarter of 2021. The exploratory analysis shows that growth of Kenya’s merchandise exports remained resilient...
Blog
The zero carbon agenda and metals demand: some major dilemmas
The transition to net zero over the next few decades will involve a large increase in the global demand for many metals essential to the renewables...
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