
16 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
What’s behind pro-poor growth?Standard growth incidence curves describe how growth episodes impact on the overall income distribution. However, measuring the pro-poorness of the growth process is complex due to (i) measurement errors and (ii) effect shocks that may hit the...
Technical Note
On-model adjustment of incomes during COVID-19 in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation modelsThis note describes methods to derive employment-to-unemployment transition shares across industries during the COVID-19 pandemic and to use these shares in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation models to adjust relevant labour market variables. The...
Working Paper
Digital labour platforms as shock absorbersDigital labour platforms have grown five-fold over the last decade, enabling significant expansion in gig work worldwide. We interrogate the criticism that these platforms tend to amplify aggregate economic shocks for registered users (workers)...
Working Paper
Social protection floor gaps and pandemic relief measures: a case for universalism?With the expansion of social protection measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, considerations both old and new have surfaced regarding targeted versus universalist approaches. This study focuses on how social protection coverage before the pandemic...
Working Paper
The role of social protection and tax policies in cushioning crisis impacts on income and poverty in low- and middle-income countriesIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries enacted tax and social protection measures to help mitigate the economic hardship faced by individuals and households. This experience underscores the need to better understand the impact of...
Working Paper
The unintended long-run impacts of agro-terrorism in BrazilThis paper studies the unintended long-run effects of a permanent agricultural shock led by agro-terrorism in Brazil on the education and labour market. We explore the witches' broom outbreak in cocoa farms in the world's second most important cocoa...
Working Paper
Informal freelancers in the time of COVID-19Despite the severe negative economic shock associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence from many contexts points to a surge in sales on online platforms, as well as shifts in the composition of demand. This paper investigates how the pandemic has...
Working Paper
Forecasting recovery from COVID-19 using financial dataWe develop a new methodology to nowcast the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and forecast its evolution in small, export-oriented countries. To this aim, we exploit variation in financial indexes at the industry level and relate them to the expected...
Working Paper
Pandemics and their impact on oil and metal pricesWe examine the effect of pandemics on selected commodity prices—in particular, those of zinc, copper, lead, and oil. We set up a vector autoregressive model and analyse data since the mid-nineteenth century to determine how prices reacted to...
Working Paper
Female education and marriage in PakistanThis project aims to explore the effect of wealth shocks on education and marriage for young women in Pakistan. Financial shocks are used to estimate the probability of dropping out of education and into marriage. Using the Pakistan Rural Household...
Technical Note
Deriving shocks to household consumption expenditures from the associated income shocks resulting from COVID-19This note, which forms part of a series of technical notes that complement Lastunen et al. (2021) , reports the approach used to derive shocks to household expenditures from shocks at the individual-level labour incomes. Its structure is composed by...
Working Paper
Effects of productivity growth on domestic savings across countriesResource mobilization continues to be an important policy challenge for developing economies, raising questions as to what determines differences in saving behaviour across countries. Using a panel of 47 economies with at least 40 years of continuous...
Background Note
Do more diversified suppliers rebound faster than concentrated suppliers in times of shocks?In this background note, we examine how different firms and sectors rebound or prevail in crises. We draw on insights from the performance (upgrading potential) of Kenyan horticulture, tea, and leather export firms during two recent, but very...
Blog
Is COVID-19 really an exogenous shock?"We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." – Albert Einstein Economists invariably divide shocks into...
Working Paper
Microsimulation approaches to studying shocks and social protection in selected developing economiesThis paper calculates automatic stabilization in Ghana, South Africa, and Ecuador to explain income cushioning amid income and demand shocks. Fiscal policies within these countries are also stress tested to gauge welfare contingencies and insurance...
Working Paper
Structural change in the Mozambique economy between 2007 and 2019This study makes use of Mozambican social accounting matrices (SAMs) for the years 2007 and 2019, which we compare to uncover structural changes. Our findings reflect the significant short- and long-term challenges that Mozambican policy makers face...