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The end of poverty postponed?

Over a billion people living in poverty and a $500 million per day loss of income for the poorest people in the world could soon be reality. Blog by Andy Sumner, Chris Hoy, Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez discusses their new research.

Africa’s lockdown dilemma: High poverty and low trust

There is growing unease that blindly replicating the COVID-19 policy responses of high-income countries might inflict irreparable damage to poor households and foment social unrest in developing countries. Read more

How is COVID-19 changing development? A WIDER Webinar Series

Catch up on recordings from the WIDER Webinar Series to hear from renowned researchers on the impact of COVID-19 on development, and the implications for the Global South. More webinars to be announced soon!

COVID-19: macroeconomic dimensions in the developing world

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis. The task for economic policy is to help keep people alive, enterprises afloat, and households out of poverty.

Support new COVID-19 research - take the survey today

UNU-WIDER has partnered up with a team of international researchers from across four institutes on an exciting and very timely research initiative to collect real time data on the coronavirus and its social and economic consequences.

Journal Article: Tax-motivated transfer mispricing in South Africa - direct evidence using transaction data

This new Open Access article provides the first direct systematic evidence of profit shifting through transfer mispricing in a developing country.

Visit our YouTube channel

Want to catch up on our recent events? Find out what Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz think about the SDGs? Click here to visit us on YouTube.

Research and policy briefs

Evidence-based policymaking is crucial. Use our publications search to browse nearly 200 briefs which highlight the findings and policy implications of our research.

46 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...

Blog

Out of the Poverty Trap Through Higher Aspirations?

by Jukka Pirttilä
January 2015

Why does a mother from a poor African village not send her daughter to school, but instead marries her off to an old man as a second or third wife? This way poverty is inherited from parent to child...

Agricultural laborers Children Field experiments

Blog

Lessons from Behavioural Economics for Development Policy

by Jukka Pirttilä
April 2014

23 April 2014 Jukka Pirttilä In conventional economic theory, agents are assumed to be able to make rational choices, unaffected by emotions and not constrained by decision-making errors...

Decision making Economic development Psychological aspects (Economics)

Working Paper

Savings By and For the Poor: A Research Review and Agenda

The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to undersaving compared to a world without market or behavioural frictions...

Banks and banking Choice Consumption (Economics)

by Tony Addison
February 2014

21 February 2014 Tony Addison Development researchers live in a world where research on development, not just in economics but also political science, environmental science, anthropology (to name just a few areas of inquiry) is abundant...

Economic development Government policy (Poor) Measurement (Poverty)

Working Paper

Social Capital, Network Effects and Savings in Rural Vietnam

Information failures are a major barrier to formal financial saving in low income countries...

Business networks Financial institutions Households

Journal Article

Is Economic Volatility Detrimental to Global Sustainability?

In a dynamic panel data model allowing for error cross-section dependence, output volatility is found to impede sustainable development...

Business cycles Capital investments Economic development

Blog

Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Development: Looking at the MDGs from a Different Angle?

by George Mavrotas
January 2009

George Mavrotas While recent years have witnessed new interest in the finance–growth nexus, the relationship between domestic resource mobilization and financial development remains relatively unexplored...

Banks and banking Capital market Financial institutions

Policy Brief

Vulnerability in Developing Countries

The first Millennium Development Goal aims to halve the number of people in the world living in extreme poverty...

Environmental economics Households Poverty

Book

Domestic Resource Mobilization and Financial Development

This significant and timely volume offers crucial insights into the constantly evolving debate within the international development community regarding the mobilization of domestic resources and the crucial role that financial development can and sho...

Banks and banking Capital market Financial institutions