Blog
Science and Survival: Is an Agriculture-led Developmental Model the Way Forward for sub-Saharan Africa?
9 May 2013 Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen and Roger Williamson Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century, (edited by Adam Szirmai, Wim...
Blog
The View from Buenos Aires
Tony Addison A visit to Buenos Aires in September provided a good vantage point to look at the euro zone’s deepening crisis. Angle readers will recall...
Working Paper
New technologies create opportunities
This paper argues that new technologies—for communication, such as mobile phones and the internet, but also for manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and transport—have the potential to bridge many of the productivity gaps between sub-Saharan Africa...
Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Fast-growing developing countries have emerged as an important destination and source of trade, investments and technology. Furthermore, trade between developing countries has grown rapidly over the last decades, and is becoming more diversified...
Working Paper
Scoping Study on the Evolution of Industry in Ghana
This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to...
Working Paper
Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Development in Africa
A sustainable pathway for Africa in the twenty-first century is laid out in the setting of the development of innovation capabilities and the capture of latecomer advantages. Africa has missed out on these possibilities in the twentieth century while...
Annual Lecture
From Flying Geese to Leading Dragons
Structural transformation is a pre-requisite for sustained growth and poverty reduction — such was the conviction of development economists in the mid twentieth century. They demonstrated empirically that moving resources out of low-productivity...
Blog
Global Recycling Supply Chains and Waste Picking in Developing Countries
by
Martin Medina
December 2009
Martin Medina As world leaders gather in Copenhagen this month for the fifteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) the challenges...
Blog
Is Manufacturing Still the Main Engine of Growth in Developing Countries?
by
Adam Szirmai
May 2009
Adam Szirmai Since the late 18th century, the manufacturing sector has been the main engine of growth and catch up. Presently, however, service sector...
Working Paper
The Theory and Practice of Agriculture, Growth, and Development in Africa
Africa’s improved growth performance over the last 15 years provides an opportunity for the continent to transit from recovery to structural transformation. This paper reviews the evolution of development theory and practice, the role of agriculture...
Blog
Twenty Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Travails of East Germany’s Economic Transition
by
Charles S. Maier
November 2009
Charles S. Maier When the Berlin Wall fell, twenty years ago, on 9 November 1989, many expected that the East German (German Democratic Republic - DDR...
Working Paper
The Practice of Industrial Policy – Lessons for Africa
This paper draws on both successful and failing cases of industrialization in China to analyse the role of local governments in fostering the growth of light manufacturing. The broad spectrum of support types and the intimate knowledge of enterprise...
Working Paper
Costa Rica
Over the last thirty-five years, Costa Rican exports (in dollars) have grown at an average annual growth rate of 10.8 per cent. In the context of an import substituting industrialization and subregional integration, exports grew at increasingly...
Working Paper
The Weightless Economy in Economic Development
Can the increasing significance of knowledge-products in national income— the growing weightless economy—influence economic development? Those technologies reduce “distance” between consumers and knowledge production. This paper analyzes a model...
Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
This issue contains seven articles addressing the major changes underway in the integration of economies in southern Africa. This special issue is based on the UNU-WIDER project 'Regional growth and development in Southern Africa'. This project aims...
Working Paper
Growth, Structural Change and Inequality
The impressive economic growth record of Thailand before 1997 was dominated by the increasing importance of modem industrialization, as well as the expansion of other sectors. This occurred at the expense of agriculture, which accounts for the...
Working Paper
New Paradigms on Ownership of the Firm
This paper establishes a theoretical framework for the ongoing research project of UNU/WIDBR on Property Rights Regimes, Microeconomic Incentives and Development. It identifies the major research interests, questions, and focuses. The theoretical...
Book Chapter
Agriculture, Growth, and Development in Africa
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.Africa has achieved a much-improved agricultural and economic growth performance over the last 15 years. During 2003-2010 the agricultural sector grew at an annual average rate of almost...
Book Chapter
Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Development in Africa
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 2.
Working Paper
Structural transformation and international trade
How does international trade affect structural transformation in developing countries? We use data on sectoral allocation of labour and value-added in 46 developing economies over the period 1995–2017 and exploit for identification plausibly...
Working Paper
Digital de-industrialization, global value chains, and structural transformation
Digitalization and shifting patterns of globalization are fast changing the rules of the game for countries embarking on a path of industrialization. In this study, we empirically examine the impact of digitalization and global value chains on...
Journal Article
A manufacturing (re)naissance?
This study examines industrialization in developing countries. It introduces the GGDC-UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides consistent annual data of employment, real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 economies for the...
Blog
Sub-Saharan Africa had a manufacturing renaissance in 2010s – it’s a promising sign for the years ahead
by
Gaaitzen de Vries, Emmanuel Mensah, Hagen Kruse,
Kunal Sen
February 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy, with world output contracting at 3.5% in 2020, and no recovery likely before the fourth...
Journal Article
Bringing state-owned entities back into the industrial policy debate
Discussions on the developing world's industrial policies have largely neglected the role of state-owned entities. This paper argues that the resurgence of state capitalism has been, in part, the response of developing countries to the recent pattern...
Working Paper
Learning from experience: Special Economic Zones in Southern Africa
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become common across Southern Africa in the past 20 years. In line with experiences in the rest of the world, they have had at best marginal success. Their essential premise is that it should be more efficient and...
Book
The Practice of Industrial Policy
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Much of the information relevant...