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From the Editor’s Desk (September 2012)Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
In examining the welfare situation, this paper explores the relationship between economic changes and social development in Asian transition economies. Under the central planning system, achievements in human development in these countries were...
This paper presents a brief history of social services provision in Nigeria with special reference to education. It argues that the problems of implementation of social policies are due to state monopolies; the negative effects of structural...
China's approach to feeding its 22 per cent of the world population has varied considerably during the 36 years of the People's Republic, and so have the results. In the late 1970s its leadership began repudiating much of the country's earlier...
This paper examines the causes and consequences of the increase in regional disparities in China during its economic transition towards a 'socialist market economy'. Part 1 seeks to explain why the 'Core' provinces in southeast China have...
Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorer countries undergoing transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. Unlike its neighbour Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan followed a rather radical reform strategy, introduced liberal macroeconomic reforms and large...
This Working Paper discusses mixed systems in which SMEs functioned successfully in the presence of extensive state ownership of large enterprises and even classical central planning. Past and present examples are considered in which a small...
North Korea's economic reform began in the mid-1980s. It was motivated by the increasing seriousness of the problems typical of centrally planned socialist economies.In general, the country's reforms have so far been limited both in scope and depth...
Part of Journal Special Issue Urban Governance and Service Delivery in sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan African cities have been growing at historically unprecedented rates. Since the early 1970s, they have welcomed international assistance involving a succession of major thematic objectives. The main agency involved in urban assistance has...
The great transformation undertaken by the countries of the former communist bloc exhibits immense diversity in terms of initial conditions, shifting target models, consistency, paths, speed, progress to date, and economic performance. This is the...
Part of Book Transition and Institutions
China’s current fiscal system is largely decentralized while its governance structure is rather centralized with strong top-down mandates and a homogenous governance structure. Due to large differences in initial economic structures and revenue bases...
This paper constructs and analyses a long-run time-series for regional inequality in China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late...