
8 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
Poverty and wellbeing impacts of microfinanceOver the last 35 years, microfinance has been generally regarded as an effective policy tool in the fight against poverty. Yet, the question of whether access to credit leads to poverty reduction and improved wellbeing remains open. To address this...
Working Paper
Does aid support democracy?This study draws on a rigorous systematic review—to our knowledge the first in this area—to take stock of the literature on aid and democracy. It asks: Does aid—especially democracy aid—have positive impact on democracy? How? What factors most...
Journal Article
Impact evaluation and synthesisTHIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | We examine how impact evaluation (IE) and associated syntheses contribute to evidence generation in low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries. We interviewed over 50 individuals from relevant organisations and five LMIC...
Working Paper
Evidence on aid (in)effectiveness in highly fragile statesThis working paper provides a summary of three systematic reviews on the effectiveness of aid in Afghanistan, Mali, and South Sudan between 2008 and 2021. These three countries, like all other highly fragile countries, suffer from bad governance...
Working Paper
The impact of impact evaluationIn 2006 the Center for Global Development’s report ‘When Will We Ever Learn? Improving lives through impact evaluation’ bemoaned the lack of rigorous impact evaluations. The authors of the present paper researched international organizations and...
Working Paper
What works to mitigate and reduce relative (and absolute) inequality?Over the past two decades, research on the impacts of a diverse range of public policies and income inequality has seen rapid growth. Despite the large number of publications to date, there remain important lacunae in our understanding of how policy...
Working Paper
Does affirmative action address ethnic inequality?Despite the good intentions behind affirmative action policies to mediate ‘horizontal inequalities’ between ethnic groups, the evidence on their effectiveness remains open to debate. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature...
Working Paper
The impact of affirmative action in India and the United StatesThis paper provides a systematic review of quantitative literature investigating the success of affirmative action policies in addressing socio-economic inequalities between ethnic groups in education and employment. We focus on two of the most...