
59 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
Enforcing the Right to Food in IndiaOver 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...
Working Paper
Realizing the Right to Food in South AsiaBasic human rights recognize the intrinsic value of freedom, only not for the value of freedom itself, but also for its instrumental role enabling an individual to choose a bundle of commodities and wellbeing. The role of food, a basic necessity of...
Working Paper
Patterns of Rent-Extraction and Deployment in Developing CountriesRents tend to be relatively high in developing countries and also very fungible, so that differences in the scale of the rent and in its distribution among economic agents profoundly affect the nature of the political state and the development...
Blog
Good Governance: Is it about Appearance or Action?
27 May 2013 Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School A growing governance agenda and post-2015 ambitions The governance agenda has grown rapidly in the...
Journal Article
Anti-corruption policy making, discretionary power and institutional qualityWe 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...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (September 2012)
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Working Paper
Bilateral Donors' Aid Allocation DecisionsThe present paper adds to the already large existing literature on aid distribution as it runs an equation on bilateral aid allocation on a very rich dataset, covering 20 years (1980-99), 22 donors and 137 recipients, which permits a three...
Working Paper
Privatization and Economic Strategy in MozambiquePrivatization, together with liberalization and deregulation, constituted the core of Mozambique's economic transition. Privatization in Mozambique has taken place on an unusually large scale in comparison with the rest of Africa. Privatization...
Working Paper
Poverty-Reducing Institutional Change and PRSP ProcessesThis paper assesses the preparation of Ghana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy paper (GPRS), paying particular attention to its likely influence on the institutionalisation of anti-poverty measures in the country’s political economy. After examining...
Working Paper
Anti-corruption policy-making, discretionary power, and institutional qualityWe analyse policy makers’ 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...
Working Paper
Botswana as a Role Model for Country SuccessI argue that the economic success of Botswana can be explained by the historical development of its institutions which is related to the trajectory of the Tswana states over the past 200 years. These institutions created a much more stable and...
Working Paper
Monitoring and Evaluation Reform under Changing Aid ModalitiesThis paper grew out of our bewilderment with the insouciance with which some in the donor community seem ready to abandon accounting for the use of aid. If one listens to the rhetoric surrounding the new approach to aid, one gets the impression that...
Working Paper
Reform of the Malawian Public SectorSince the early 1990s, Malawi has tried to undertake economic reforms, including the restructuring of the public sector, even as it embraced democratic reforms. Paucity of human and financial resources has made the process difficult and drawn out...
Working Paper
Analyzing Corruption Possibilities in the Gaze of the MediaIn this paper I analyze the economic incentives that govern the strategic relationship between the government and the independent media using a consistent analytical framework. The analysis focuses on the extent to which the ‘free’ press can act as a...
Working Paper
Reconstruction from Breakdown in Northeastern IndiaThe northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region’s crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor...
Working Paper
The Rule of Law, Legal Traditions, and Economic Growth in East AsiaThis paper examines the literature on the rule of law and economic development, and in particular the influential argument by La Porta et al., on the superiority of the Anglo-American common law system in fostering financial development. In this...