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From the Editor's Desk (February 2012)
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
204 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Blog
From The Editor's Desk (December 2012)
Tony Addison This year has rushed by at speed. For UNU-WIDER it’s been a year of big successes. We will have published some 110 working papers by the...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (August 2012)
Tony Addison With this issue, Angle returns refreshed from its Nordic summer break. The sun continues to shine on the Baltic, although it is getting...
Policy Brief
Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Lessons from ExperienceIn simple language and with numerous concrete examples, this policy brief analyses the impact - among others - of key ex-ante factors such as acute 'horizontal inequality' between social groups in the distribution of assets, state jobs, social...
Journal Special Issue
Explaining Violent ConflictRecent years have seen a surge of research into the causes of conflict together with its development effects, as well as the design of peace initiatives, peace-keeping and programmes of reconstruction, reconciliation and democratization in ‘post...
Journal Special Issue
Conflict and Peace-buildingReconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for the UN system as well as the wider donor community. National authorities and their donor partners are faced with multiple priorities - rebuilding infrastructure...
Journal Article
The economics of counterinsurgencyPresent in India since the 1960s, the Naxalite insurgency has steadily spread across the country. Counterinsurgency measures lagged behind and did not follow any systematic process till the early 2000s with the exception of Andhra Pradesh, which in...
Journal Article
Growth of African EconomiesRecent evidence from an exhaustive political-economy study of growth of African economies—the Growth Project of the African Economic Research Consortium—suggests that ‘policy syndromes’ have substantially contributed to the generally poor growth in...
Blog
Youth Unemployment in the Arab World: What Do We know? What is the Way Forward?
Imed Drine Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing...
Blog
Inclusive Growth in Africa
24 September 2013 Roger Williamson Another big weekend for UNU-WIDER. The stage was well set on Thursday 19 September for a consideration of...
Blog
Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Malokele Nanivazo Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo...
Policy Brief
Business and the Barrel of a GunAlthough the impacts of violent conflict on investment, production, incomes and inequality have been widely studied on an aggregate level, comparatively less is known about the more diverse impacts of such conflict at the micro (particularly firm)...
Working Paper
Conflict and Peace-building in AfricaContemporary Africa reveals a range of causes, consequences and responses to conflicts which are increasingly interrelated as well as regional in character, as around the Great Lakes/Horn. Their economic and non-state features are undeniable, leading...
Working Paper
Développement, Aide, et ConflitLe 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...
Working Paper
The Economics Of Complex Humanitarian EmergenciesThis paper, a draft from the early stages of an ongoing UNU/WIDER research project, outlines hypotheses for the economic cause of humanitarian disasters. Complex humanitarian emergencies are considered to be man-made crises, in which large numbers of...
Working Paper
The Political Economy of Complex Humanitarian EmergenciesThis paper develops and tests five hypotheses regarding the economic causes of complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs). We argue that: (1) such emergencies, involving large-scale deaths and population displacements, are most likely to occur when...
Working Paper
Humanitarian Emergencies and Warlord Economies in Liberia and Sierra LeoneThis paper explains correlations between humanitarian emergencies and political economies of 'failing states' in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both, Cold War era rulers acquired personal power through their influence over economic exchange...
Working Paper
The Age of Humanitarian EmergenciesThe Age of Humanitarian Emergencies makes an effort to define and operationalize a humanitarian emergency. After having discussed extensively definitions related to collective violence, especially genocide and civil war, the paper opts for a more...
Working Paper
Development, Aid and ConflictRwanda'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...
Working Paper
Changing Land-tenure Arrangements and Access to Primary Assets under GlobalizationThis paper illustrates how, in relation to globalization, formal and informal land institutions are prone to generate conflict over land rights and examines the implications of such conflicts on security levels of access to primary assets for the...
Working Paper
The Mozambican Civil ServiceThe post-independence Mozambican civil service, what was left of it following the exodus of Portuguese settlers in the mid-1970s, was poorly educated, with low incentives. In subsequent years, the combination of a war-ravaged economy, poor human...
Working Paper
Financial Reconstruction in Conflict and 'Post-Conflict' EconomiesThis paper discusses some of the principal issues relating to the reconstruction of the financial sector in conflict-affected countries, focusing on currency reform, the rebuilding (or creation) of central banks, the revitalization of the banking...
Working Paper
Income Distribution Policies for Faster Poverty ReductionInequality has risen in many countries over the last two decades, especially in the transition economies, but also in many developing and developed economies. This is disturbing since little progress can be made in poverty reduction when inequality...
Working Paper
The Agrarian Question in Mozambique's Transition and ReconstructionThe economic policies of transition and reconstruction in Mozambique, like the policies of central planning beforehand, were based on an inappropriate model of the inherited rural economy. Under central planning, the peasantry was looked upon as a...
Working Paper
Transnational Terrorism as a Spillover of Domestic Disputes in Other CountriesThis paper models transnational terrorism as a three-way strategic interaction involving a government that faces armed opposition at home, which may spill over in the form of acts of terrorism by the state’s opponents against the government’s...
Working Paper
Conflict in AfricaWar provides economic opportunities, such as the capture of valuable natural resources, that are unavailable in peacetime. However, belligerents may prefer low-intensity conflict to total war when the former has a greater pay-off. The paper therefore...
Working Paper
Warlord CompetitionWarlords compete for turf that provides them with rents and ‘taxable’ resources but they can also offer a semblance of security within their respective territories. This article first examines two economic models of warlord competition. Because such...
Working Paper
Ethiopia's New Financial Sector and Its RegulationEthiopia is one of a number of SSA economies that adopted state-led development strategies in the 1970s (others include Angola and Mozambique), and suffered from intense conflict (leading to the fall of the Derg regime in 1991). The new government...
Working Paper
Debt Relief and Civil WarOf the 41 HIPCs, 11 are classified by the IMF and World Bank as conflict-affected. Can debt relief reduce the level of violent conflict in these countries? By providing additional resources to finance broad-based public spending, debt relief could...
Working Paper
Fiscal Policy, Conflict, and Reconstruction in Burundi and RwandaThe ethnic conflicts in Burundi and Rwanda have severely weakened the economies and worsened the structural fiscal imbalances of these countries. Government revenue has declined due to the erosion of the tax base and tax administration capacity. At...
Displaying 32 of 204 results