
39 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Book Chapter
A brief history of the international monetary system since Bretton WoodsPart of Book Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System
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...
Working Paper
Loan Processing Costs and Information Asymmetries-Implications for Financial Sector Development and Economic GrowthThe paper presents a model in which credit-constrained firms might delay the adoption of new and more productive technologies because of the very high external financing costs they face. Our point of departure is that the efficiency of the banking...
Working Paper
Incorporating Insurance Provisions in Microfinance ContractsWe examine a simple extension to existing credit contacts for the poor (‘microfinance contracts’), that would allow financial institutions to provide repayment insurance to their clients. The proposed contract uses the repeated nature of loans to...
Working Paper
Credit Co-operatives in Locally Financed Economic DevelopmentIn most transitional and many developing countries institutions capable of supporting economic development with localized saving-investment cycles have not developed. This crucial gap is in no way addressed by either country-level macro programmes...
Working Paper
Land Titles, Credit Markets and Wealth DistributionsDoes the existence of formal title to land and real estate matter for the distribution of wealth? This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic impact of land and real estate administration systems across countries. This paper argues...
Working Paper
Credit Constraints as a Barrier to Technology Adoption by the PoorWe study the diffusion of a capital intensive technology among a fishing community in south India and analyze the dynamics of income inequality during this process. We find that lack of asset wealth is an important predictor of delayed technology...
Working Paper
The effects of land titling in TanzaniaWe use household survey data to investigate the effects of formal, private property rights to agricultural land on agricultural investment, land valuation and access to credit in Tanzania. Results show that while there are no detectable effects of...
Journal Article
The Forgotten Property RightsStudies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both...
Working Paper
Economic and non-economic returns to Communist Party membership in VietnamSingle-party political systems exist in a number of countries, such as China and Vietnam. In these countries, party membership is potentially an important source of economic and social status. This paper investigates these effects and the mechanisms...
Working Paper
State-dependent fiscal multipliers and financial dynamicsThe aim of this paper is to assess South Africa’s fiscal multiplier across different states of the economy, with a focus on the financial accelerator mechanism of fiscal policy shocks, by estimating impulse response functions from both linear and non...
Journal Article
Credit Demand in Mozambican ManufacturingThis paper uses two industrial firm surveys to identify the key determinants of credit demand in Mozambican manufacturing. We construct five different measures of being credit constrained and estimate desired debt demand. Besides firm size and...
Working Paper
Vulnerability, Trust and MicrocreditThis paper investigates the economic conditions of rural households in China. Historical survey data indicate that over 80 per cent of rural households earn less than 4,500 yuan in net disposable income each year, that for the vast majority of rural...
Working Paper
Financial Sector Development - Futile or Fruitful? An Examination of the Determinants of Savings in Sri LankaUsing dynamic econometric techniques the paper investigates the determinants of private saving in Sri Lanka with a primary focus on the role of financial sector development. Empirical evidence is obtained indicating the existence of the Ricardian...
Working Paper
Foreign Banks and Credit VolatilityForeign bank presence has substantially increased in Latin America during the second half of the 1990s, which has prompted an intense debate on its banking and macroeconomic consequences. In this paper, we apply ARCH techniques to jointly estimate...
Working Paper
Political Connections and Investment in Rural VietnamThis paper uses household panel data from rural Vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power on farmers’ agricultural investment decisions. Our main result is that households significantly...