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...

315 Blogpost

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

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...

Blog
Time to rethink theory on the role of finance in development: The new structural financial economics framework

The primary role of finance is to serve the ‘real economy’¬—the part of the economy that produces goods and services. Yet in practice, the financial...

Blog
The poorest countries attract few foreign investments
Placeholder

The share of the least developed countries (LDCs) in global foreign investments is less than one percent. But positive developments have taken place...

Blog
Cash Plus: Towards poverty reduction in Zambia
Placeholder

The Zambian government wants to reduce poverty by 20% by 2030. To make this happen, the government reformed their national cash transfer programmes...

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
Realizing socioeconomic rights with a limited budget

The South African constitution is considered progressive and transformative in intention due to its inclusion of socioeconomic rights, such as the...

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
$1 trillion in the shade: The annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb

About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15...

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
Direct support to small scale farmers reduces poverty: What Zambia is doing right

Over half of Zambia’s population lived below the national poverty line in 2015. In rural areas, where 89% of households are engaged in agriculture...

Blog
In memory of Martin Ravallion: A global leader in development economics

(19 March 1952 – 24 December 2022) It is with the greatest sadness and a deep sense of grief and shock that we received the news of the passing of...

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...

Blog
Global tax reforms, net-zero, and domestic revenue: Food for thought from the DRM programme
Placeholder

Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) and taxation have gained prominence lately on the global agenda, most recently with the resolution for the United...

Blog
Empirical research is crucial for better tax enforcement in the developing world
Placeholder

I had the privilege to participate in the UNU-WIDER Winter School as one of the lecturers. In this blog, I explain my main takeaways for students and...

Displaying 16 of 315 results