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Reflections on Transition: Twenty Years after the Fall of The Berlin WallGérard Roland The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki...
Gérard Roland The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki...
This paper adds to the recent literature on firm-level corruption by relying on rich data including detailed information on the purpose and amounts of bribe payments among Vietnamese micro, small, and medium firms. Using industry-location averages to...
Malokele Nanivazo Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo...
In the first two or three decades of independence, Nigeria, like the rest of Africa. placed heavy emphasis on expanding educational opportunities from primary school through university. This has resulted in a very impressive increase in the number of...
This paper tests the effect of corruption on the efficiency of capital investment. Using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments...
Le génocide rwandais est le résultat final d'une combinaison de mécanismes dont aucun ne peut revendiquer être prioritaire ou indépendant des autres. Parmi ces mécanismes figurent une extrême pauvreté et la réduction des perspectives d'avenir pour la...
There has been a phenomenal global increase in the proportion of women in politics in the last 20 years. While there is evidence that raising the share of women politicians has substantive impacts on the composition of government spending, there is...
This paper examines irregular South-South migration from China to Ghana, and the role it has played in transforming livelihoods and broader developmental landscapes. It looks at the entry from the mid-2000s of approximately 50,000 Chinese migrants...
Can a society suffering contests between rich and poor achieve good governance in the face of endemic corruption? We examine a stylized poor state with weak institutions in which a ‘culture of evasion’ damages state authority. Many evade tax payments...
Data from several investor surveys suggest that macroeconomic instability, investment restrictions, corruption and political instability have a negative impact on foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa. However, the relationship between FDI and...
This paper presents a model allowing one to analyze the joint determination of inequality, taxes, human capital and growth. We consider the political economy of redistribution between three income groups in a dynamic economy. The paper seeks to...
We analyse policymakers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability when...
Rwanda's genocide is the end-result of a combination of processes, none of which can easily be priorized or separated from the others. These processes are: extreme pauperization and reduction of life chances for a majority of the poor, especially...
Across Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia, political candidates often attempt to buy the votes of the most socio-economically deprived communities. But new...
Local governments in India—known as panchayats—are sometimes criticised for failing to deliver benefits earmarked for vulnerable regions or households...
Extractive industries are spread across mining of metal and minerals, oil and gas, among others. Multinationals in these sectors are confronted with different challenges ranging from corruption, political risk, economic uncertainty, sunk costs, and...
In an environment with extensive corruption where much of the population evades paying their full taxes due, we tackle the question of optimal taxation when constituencies with opposing objectives (the poor and the rich) push tax policy in different...
The United Kingdom’s (UK) property markets are thought to be a common destination for corrupt and criminal assets and money laundering, with investment often through offshore shell companies. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we...
This paper empirically investigates the link between the level of government revenue per capita and six indicators of quality of governance in an unbalanced panel data set consisting of all countries in the world (217) using data from 1980 to 2020...
'I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more… We are coming for your ill...
Does foreign aid end up in the pockets of elites instead of contributing to inclusive economic development? A recently published journal article...
Community-driven reconstruction (CDR) is an approach to post-war reconstruction that gives discretion to local community councils in establishing priorities and overseeing the implementation of reconstruction and development activities. A series of...
In many countries, news of an oil discovery or the award of an exploration license is rarely greeted with enthusiasm by the general public. Any hopes...
One of the most pressing challenges in development policy is to bring about rapid, sustained, and inclusive growth in developing countries. Apart from...
It is widely believed that clientelism—the giving of material goods in return for electoral support—is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development...
While the short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on lives and livelihoods are well understood, we know little about the effect of the pandemic for longer-term outcomes such as corruption. We look at the historical data on political and economic...
This second of two papers on global oil theft discusses ways to reduce oil theft, misappropriation, and fraud. At US$133 billion per year, oil is the largest stolen natural resource globally, while fuel is the most smuggled natural resource. Oil...
We show that the incorporation of offshore entities increases when oil and gas exploration licences are awarded. We exploit leaked data on the incorporation of shell companies and detailed information on tax havens and the awarding rounds of oil...
This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum...
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
UNU-WIDER had a busy September. We celebrated our 30th birthday with some 600 people at our three-day conference on ‘Mapping the Future of Development...
Foreign aid can contribute to sustainable forestry in many ways. The goal is to secure forest benefits of the future, without compromising the needs of the present generations. This paper elaborates on forestry aid as it has evolved in the past...
After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly...
In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of ‘what works’ in...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Civil service reform is one of the most intractable yet important challenges for governments and their supporters today. However, civil service reform thus far has largely failed. Based on a review of existing literature, this paper presents...
Why do some states, with foreign assistance, transition from ‘fragile’ to ‘robust?’ Scholars in state-building have argued that neotrusteeship is an effective strategy by which external organizations might build post-conflict states. This working...
This paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. It has pursued reforms actively and consistently for three decades now, and has produced many laws, processes and structures that are ‘best in class’ in Africa...
In an environment with extensive corruption where much of the population evades paying their full taxes due, we tackle the question of optimal taxation when constituencies with conflicting objectives (the poor and the rich) push tax policy in...
This paper is a short history of the Indian economy since 1968. India today is a changed country from what it was half a century ago, when Myrdal published his Asian Drama. The stranglehold of low growth has been broken, its population below the...
Corruption is widely believed to negatively affect economic growth. However, many East and Southeast Asia countries either achieved or currently are achieving impressively rapid economic growth despite widespread corruption — the ‘East Asian Paradox’...
Part of Journal Special Issue Public economics and development action
‘In a very real sense, the conditions that spawned the war and inflicted gruesome casualties on Sierra Leone’s citizens have not disappeared’, warned the International Crisis Group. In this paper we argue that many of those conditions are being...
This article examines the external and internal dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone. The United Nations, bilateral donors such as the United Kingdom, and transnational non-governmental organizations and aid agencies have been...
We analyze the relation between inequality, corruption and competition in a developing economy context where markets are imperfect. We consider an economy where different types of households (efficient and inefficient) choose to undertake production...
Part of Journal Special Issue Migration Governance and Policy in the Global South
Revenues from taxation gain in importance to finance economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. One obstacle to enhancing the willingness to remit taxes can be the extortion of bribes by public officials. Using micro-level data from the...
Many practical and action-oriented international roadmaps to improve the quality of aid and its delivery and impact on development—including the Paris Declaration, Accra Agenda for Action, and Busan Partnership—emphasize a more active involvement of...
Over the past decade, a series of events in India have brought the question of food security into sharp focus. Vast famine-affected areas versus surplus production and stocks of grains, the impact of globalization and World Trade Organization laws on...
It is important to make a careful distinction between illegal immigration, human smuggling, and human trafficking which are nested, but yet different concepts. This distinction is relevant because these different categories of the illegal movement of...
This paper considers the effect of corruption on the efficiency of capital investment. Using firm-level level data from the World Bank enterprise surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe...
When Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in spring 2014 the Indian economy was in the doldrums. There was a clear policy paralysis in India’s...
The relationship between the cocaine trade and urban land markets in South America has been overlooked by the mainstream economics and urban studies literature. This paper examines two avenues through which the cocaine trade can have a large impact...
Part of Book Poverty, International Migration and Asylum
Part of Journal Special Issue Experiments in Development Economics
Successive governments in Nigeria have introduced reforms aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the civil service. Still, the service remains inefficient and incapable of reforming itself, let alone the rest of the economy...
Part of Journal Special Issue Explaining Violent Conflict
This paper investigates the relationship between taxation and firm performance in developing countries. Taking firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) and tax data from the Government Revenue Dataset (ICTD/UNU-WIDER), our...
Part of Journal Special Issue FDI to Developing Countries