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Globalization in crisis – confronting a new economic reality

WIDER Annual Lecture 27

Report: Towards peace, decent work, and greater equality

Research evidence for transforming economies, states, and societies

New WIID Explorer!

A powerful tool for accessing and analysing data on income inequality

UNU-WIDER 2022 Annual Report is released

2022 was a key year in the UNU-WIDER 2019–2023 work programme, with great achievements made possible through our partnerships and collaborations Read more in the 2022 Annual Report.

The Job Ladder: Transforming informal work and livelihoods in developing countries

NEW BOOK - Available now on Open Access. Providing a nuanced view of informality across a range of developing economies using a common conceptual framework.

Check out our new series of short videos on ‘The puzzle of peace’!

Learn about key issues in peace and conflict research in two minutes from top experts in the field. Click here to watch.

Capacity development in action: UNU-WIDER Winter School

In collaboration with Stellenbosch University, we organised an intensive winter school course on tax policy research, delivering training to 27 African researchers from 13 countries. Read more

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Our research and policy briefs provide a short overview with key findings, lessons, and policy implications, from some of our key research outputs.

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20 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...

Working Paper

Cocaine Cities

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...

Working Paper

Habitat II and the Urban Economy

The strategic conferences organized by the UN during the past 25 years have focused on assisting and mobilizing governments and other relevant actors of international life by enhancing collective thinking and action in those areas which may...

Working Paper

Lofty pine and clinging vine

We investigate the heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission channels of education and the impact on this of house price appreciation. Using the China Household Finance Survey 2011, we construct household history of property...

Working Paper

Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Rural-Urban Inequality

Using China as a test case, this paper empirically investigates how the development of financial intermediation affects rural-urban income disparity (RUID). Using 20-year province level panel data, we find that the level of financial development is...

Working Paper

Housing and Personal Wealth in a Global Context

Housing is the single most important component of personal wealth in most countries. The special characteristics of housing markets are therefore key to understanding personal portfolios, saving, the household distribution of wealth, and the monetary...

Working Paper

The Scale and Nature of International Donor Assistance to Housing, Basic Services and Other Human-Settlements Related Projects

This paper describes the scale and nature of development assistance to projects that sought to improve housing and living conditions for low income groups, including housing-related infrastructure and services such as water supply, sanitation and...

Journal Article

The intergenerational impact of house prices on education

We investigate heterogeneous and nonlinear intergenerational transmission of education and the impact on this of house prices. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we construct household history of property pur-chases and educational investment...

Working Paper

Housing Privatization and Household Wealth in Transition

All countries in transition experienced increases in inequality. They have also undertaken massive privatization of key asset housing, often on give-away terms. Are these two phenomena related? Has transfer of ownership rights to residents slowed...

Working Paper

The Face of Urban Poverty

One of the most visible and enduring manifestations of urban poverty in developing countries is the formation and proliferation of slums. While attention has focused on the rapid pace of urbanization as the sole or major factor explaining the...

Working Paper

Parsing the Urban Poverty Puzzle

This paper describes the methodology of a longitudinal multi-generational study in the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro from 1968 to 2008. Major political transformations took place in Brazil during this interval: from dictatorship to ‘opening...