WIDERAngle

Expert commentary from our network

How India’s economy has fared under ten years of Narendra Modi

More than 960 million Indians will head to the polls in the world’s biggest election between April 19 and early June. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is seeking a third term in office. And the polls suggest it will achieve this objective.If one was to go by economic growth figures alone, the Modi government’s performance has been impressive. When Modi came to power in 2014, economic growth was sluggish. A series of high-profile corruption...

Affirmative action in Brazil’s higher education system

by Rodrigo Oliveira, Edson Severnini, Alei Santos
Evidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher-performing privileged students.Affirmative action (AA) policies, aiming to address historical inequalities and promote social justice, have sparked debates across the world. Brazil, in particular, grapples with the challenges and complexities of AA, notably through Law 12,711/2012, which introduced the quota policy mandating all federal universities...

Decoding development – insights from UNU-WIDER's synthesis process and beyond

loren-joseph-unsplash
At UNU-WIDER, we undertake our work explicitly within the context of an emergent strategy designed to maximize the impact of our research findings. We operate based on a theory of change that outlines how research eventually translates into improved development outcomes for the world’s most vulnerable populations.In 2023, we published the report Towards peace, decent work, and greater equality to guide policy efforts to achieve the United Nations Agenda 2030. This report synthesizes the key...

280 Blogpost

Blog
Affirmative action policies to increase diversity are successful, but controversial, around the world

In a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This...

Blog
Taking localisation beyond labels and lip service

Donors increasingly speak of locally led aid response, but often do not walk the walk. Case in point is the United States Agency for International...

Blog
Improving early child development outcomes in low-income settings

Improving early child development outcomes in low-income settings requires affordable, sustainable, and easily scalable solutions. The “First Steps”...

Blog
WIDER Alumni Amadou Boly shares wisdom for next generation
Placeholder

Amadou Boly is Special Assistant in the Economic Governance and Knowledge Management Complex at the African Development Bank (ADB). Before that, he...

Blog
Development aid cuts will hit fragile countries hard, could fuel violent conflict

Fragile and least developed countries have had their development assistance cut drastically, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation...

Blog
Will growth be enough to end poverty?: New Projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Today, October 17th is the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (you already knew that, right?). In new analysis for UNU-WIDER, we...

Blog
Oslo conference turns the spotlight on sustainable development financing
Placeholder

With the deadline for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals just seven years away, there is an increasing sense of urgency over the...

Blog
My journey from research assistant to the World Bank and Yale: How SA-TIED transformed my career
Placeholder

When I began my role as a research assistant for the SA-TIED programme in January 2020, I didn’t know that it would lead me to such prestigious...

Blog
Why the Aid Effectiveness Principles are important for development

Demonstrating empirically the Aid Effectiveness Principles' global impact on development is a challenge. But according to Rachel M. Gisselquist...

Blog
91% of sub-Saharan African workers don’t save for old age: Why that’s a problem and how to fix it
Placeholder

Less than 10% of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa save for old age, the lowest rate for any region in the world. That implies most of the...

Blog
Four global problems that will be aggravated by the UK’s recent cuts to international aid

UK economic forecasts have improved markedly since the September 2022 mini-budget. The economic recession may now be more shallow and public borrowing...

Blog
From Monterrey to Addis Ababa, and what has happened since?
Placeholder

The importance of domestic revenue mobilization and taxation for sustainable development is widely acknowledged in global development discussions, but...

Blog
What is next for development effectiveness in a post-aid world?
Placeholder

Improving the effectiveness of global development spending may seem like a fool's errand given the state of the world today. Yet this is precisely the...

Blog
Not too long and not too short: Introducing the new UNU-WIDER and Cambridge University Press series in Development Economics

Simon Kuznets’ pipe dream was to have economic inequality data that rarely existed when he was writing. What are the pipe dreams of today’s...

Policy Brief
Building evidence around the effectiveness principles

This policy brief draws on the studies presented at the International Research Conference on the Effectiveness of Development Cooperation on 17–18 November 2022, in Brussels, Belgium and jointly organized by UNU-WIDER and the European Commission (DG...

Blog
The inheritance of human capital: Rethinking how much parents’ influence children’s human capital in low- and middle-income countries
Placeholder

The measure of human capital —the economic value of one’s skills and experience— acknowledges that investments in people’s cognitive and emotional...

Displaying 16 of 280 results