Join the networkImage
70 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
Filter by...
Reset all
Working Paper
Affirmative action and effort choiceWe study the effect of affirmative action on effort in an experiment conducted in high schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in Queensland, Australia. All participating schools have a large representation of indigenous Australians, a...
Working Paper
Institutions, Policies and Economic DevelopmentInstitutions are not only created and built, but also, and especially, need to be learnt. It is a process which takes place in all economies, but acquires a special importance in less advanced countries. Not only theoretical arguments, but also the...
Working Paper
The Public Distribution Systems of Foodgrains and Implications for Food SecurityA comparative study of the public distribution systems of foodgrains in India and China is expected to reveal lessons and experiences that are valuable to policymakers. This is particularly important for developing countries in their endeavour to...
Working Paper
Aid Project Proliferation and Absorptive CapacityMuch public discussion about foreign aid has focused on whether and how to increase its quantity. But recently aid quality has come to the fore, by which is meant the efficiency of the aid delivery process. This paper focuses on one process problem...
Working Paper
Tax Policy Reforms in NigeriaNigeria is governed by a federal system, hence its fiscal operations also adhere to the same principle, a fact which has serious implications on how the tax system is managed. The country’s tax system is lopsided, and dominated by oil revenue. It is...
Working Paper
Food Marketing ReconsideredThe liberalization of food marketing has been implemented as part of structural adjustment programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this study we assess i) the aims of reform policy, ii) the implementation of specific reform measures, iii) the politics...
Working Paper
HIPC Relief: Too Late, Too Little?In 1970 the external debt of Tanzania, a least developed country, was 16.8 per cent of GDP and 58.6 per cent of exports. The ratio of per capita debt to per capita income was 14.4 per cent. By 2001 the debt had reached just over 100 per cent of GDP...
Working Paper
Incentive Structure and Efficiency in the Kenyan Civil ServiceKenya’s civil service expanded rapidly after independence, becoming by far the largest in East Africa. Following economic decline since the 1980s, however, it became difficult for the government to sustain a large and inefficient public sector. To...
Working Paper
Owning Economic ReformsThis paper compares reform ownership in Ghana and Tanzania over the past two decades. It finds that on several dimensions, Ghana’s early economic reforms enjoyed a high degree of ownership. That ownership was not embedded, however, in a politico...
Working Paper
Fuelling War or Buying PeaceCorruption is endogenous to many political structures and serves key functions beyond the self-interest of public officials and politicians. Like violence, corruption participates in political ordering and, although corruption may in itself play a...
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
HIPC Debt Relief and Policy Reform IncentivesIn this paper, I discuss the incentives that the HIPC Initiative could create in debtor countries in favour of economic adjustment and reform. The usual debt-overhang argument, stating that debt relief will increase the net benefits of reforms, needs...
Working Paper
Changing Approaches to Public Expenditure Management in Low-Income Aid Dependent CountriesThe present paper critically examines how aid dependent low-income countries have approached the process of public expenditure management reform during the 1990s. It begins with an overview of broader public sector reform initiatives in LDCs which...
Working Paper
Rekindling Governments from WithinThis paper shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil’s state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies...
Working Paper
Is it Possible to Reform a Customs Administration?An ethnographic approach is applied to Cameroon customs in order to explore the role and the capacity of the bureaucratic elites to reform their institution. Fighting against corruption has led to the extraction and circulation of legal ‘collective...
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...
Displaying 16 of 70 results