
56 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Journal Article
Aid Impact and EffectivenessPart of Journal Special Issue Aid Impact and Effectiveness
Working Paper
Institutions and Asia’s developmentThe role of institutions in Asian development has been intensely contested since Myrdal’s Asian Drama, with later contributions from institutional economics and developmental state theory. Despite much progress, the dominant approaches do not agree...
Working Paper
Revisiting the methodology of Myrdal in Asian Drama 50 years onThis paper reviews the main methodological innovations in Asian Drama . It considers whether Myrdal’s perspectives have been adopted by development analysts, and where fresh thinking is needed, particularly in the light of changes occurring in the...
Working Paper
Understanding the boomThere are large volumes of gas offshore Tanzania, which has raised hopes of a boom. But those hopes look set to be disappointed. A boom would depend on there being a sizeable flow of revenue to government from producing and exporting gas. This paper...
Working Paper
Understanding the boomA significant natural resource discovery creates excited popular expectations of imminent wealth. But the size of a boom is usually overestimated and the delay in receiving revenues is underestimated. This paper takes stock of the sequencing, timing...
Working Paper
Institutional bypass and aid effectiveness in AfricaMany practical and action-oriented international roadmaps to improve the quality of aid and its delivery and impact on development—including the Paris Declaration, Accra Agenda for Action, and Busan Partnership—emphasize a more active involvement of...
Working Paper
Social norms as a barrier to women’s employment in developing countriesThis paper discusses cultural barriers to women’s participation and success in the labor market in developing countries. I begin by describing how gender norms influence the relationship between economic development and female employment, as well as...
Working Paper
The effects of wartime institutions on households’ ability to cope with shocksThis paper studies the legacies of wartime institutions, measured as rebelocracy, on the ability of households to cope with negative income shocks. Rebelocracy is the social order established by non-state armed actors in the communities they control...
Journal Article
The long-term economic legacies of rebel rule in civil warTHIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | A growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first...
Working Paper
The state and the ‘legalization’ of illicit financial flowsMost research on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has focused on illicit outflows from developing countries and the role of non-state actors in generating IFFs. Less attention has been paid to processes and interfaces through which IFFs enter formal...
Working Paper
Can domestic institutions affect exports and innovation?Studies show that when exports go up, innovation goes up as well. But what is the mediating effect of domestic institutions in the association between exports and innovation? If any, which institutions are more likely to improve exports and...
Working Paper
Inequality and human developmentIn this paper we reassess the relationship between inequality and human development, focusing on the differential effect associated with the concentration of national income at different parts of the income distribution. To do so, we rely on a large...
Working Paper
Frontier governmentalityWe examine whether frontier rule, which disallows frontier residents from recourse to formal institutions of conflict management and disproportionately empowers tribal elites, provides a more fragile basis for maintaining social order in the face of...
Working Paper
Trust in institutions and the profile of inequalityThis paper investigates the importance of accounting for the profile of inequality in the analysis of institutional trust. Drawing on individual data from 82 countries around the world over the 1981–2021 period, it sheds light on the potential...