Working Paper
Poverty Alleviation during the Transition in Rural China
According to information issued at the World Food Summit held in Rome in 1996, about one fifth of the world's population is now living under the poverty line, and this number is increase by 25 million people in developing countries every year. For...
Working Paper
Lush Fields and Parched Throats
Groundwater resources in Gujarat (India) have been depleting at an darning rate in recent years. The most visible symptom of this phenomenon is the decline of water tables in large pats of the state. The scarcity of groundwater is most severe during...
Working Paper
Market Responses to Anti-Hunger Policies
The way markets respond to anti-hunger policies can have considerable bearing on their effectiveness. This paper investigates market responses to various policies, including direct transfer payments, relief work, food pricing policies, public grain...
Blog
Multidimensional Poverty: Measurement and Implications: An Interview with James Foster
by
Roger Williamson
October 2013
17 October 2013 James Foster describes the importance of moving beyond income poverty as a way of assessing 'who is poor?' and 'how poor?'...
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in Africa
What 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...
Working Paper
Evaluating Aid Impact
The ultimate measure of aid effectiveness is how aid affects the lives of poor people in developing countries. The huge literature on aid’s macroeconomic impact has remarkably little to say on this topic, and less still in terms of practical advice...
Working Paper
Applying Behavioural Economics to International Development Policy
Many development policies and programmes are premised on a traditional economic model of rationality to predict how individuals will respond to changes in incentives. Despite the emphasis of these programmes on poverty reduction, economists and the...
Working Paper
Poverty, social networks, and clientelism
Why are the poor susceptible to clientelism, and what factors shield them from the influence of vote buying? We explore the role of both formal and informal social networks in shaping the likelihood of being targeted with private inducements. We...
Working Paper
Herding, rent-seeking taxpayers, and endemic corruption
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...
Working Paper
Forest Management, Gender, and Food Security of the Rural Poor in Africa
This paper addresses the economic impact of forest management on gender and food security of rural poor in Africa. The analyses reveal that deforestation places major demands on women and children’s time, limiting their opportunities to obtain an...
Working Paper
Risk Experiments in Gains and Losses
The aim of this paper is to expand our knowledge on risk aversion among the poor by conducting experiments that do not only test risk aversion in small and large stakes but also in risky gains and risky losses. To our knowledge, this is the first...
Journal Article
Herding, taxpayer's rent seeking and endemic corruption
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...
Working Paper
Sensitivity of Loan Size to Lending Rates
This paper examines the combined effect of interest rates and poverty levels of microfinance clients on loan size. Cross section data on 2,691 clients and non-clients households from Ghana is used to test the hypothesis of loan price inelasticity...
Blog
Aid and our Changing Environment: What did we Learn?
24 June 2013 Tony Addison The Stockholm ReCom results meeting at Sida on 4 June was a lively exchange on all aspects of foreign aid and climate change...
Blog
Taxation: Inequality, Equity, and Efficiency – An Interview with Michael Keen
by
Roger Williamson
December 2014
8 October 2014 by Roger Williamson Michael Keen from the International Monetary Fund addressed the UNU-WIDER Development Conference in September 2014...
Annual Lecture
WIDER Annual Lecture 4 - Globalization and Appropriate Governance
Globalization has come in for indiscriminate attack from critics who do not distinguish between different types of globalization (e.g. freer trade, freer capital flows, freer direct investment, and freer immigration) or between very different but...
Mon, 27 November 2000
Assembly House of the Estates (Säätytalo),
Snellmaninkatu 9-11,
Helsinki,
Finland
Past event
Blog
The Future of Aid – Poverty and the Middle Income Countries
24 September 2013 Andy Sumner A series of papers since late 2010 has discussed a shift in the location or 'geography' of global poverty. The shift is...