Journal Article
Biofuels and Economic Development
Biofuels could offer new economic opportunities for low-income countries. We use a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model of Tanzania to evaluate different biofuels production options and estimate their impacts on growth and poverty...
Research Brief
Burkina Faso – growth without poverty reduction
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, poor in natural resources, and with low levels of human development. Its economy remains agricultural and focused on food crops and cotton production. Over the last twenty years it has experienced...
Journal Article
Measuring the Carbon Intensity of the South African Economy
We estimate the carbon intensity of industries, products and households in South Africa using data from a high resolution supply-use table. Direct and indirect carbon usage is measured using multiplier methods that capture inter-industry linkages and...
Working Paper
Prospects for Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic in Kenya
Capacity planners in developing countries frequently use screening curves and other system-independent metrics such as levelized cost of energy to guide investment decisions. This can lead to spurious conclusions when evaluating intermittent power...
Working Paper
Youth in Tanzania’s Urbanizing Mining Settlements
Over the last fifteen years many African countries have experienced a ‘mining take-off’. Mining activities have bifurcated into two sectors: large-scale, capital-intensive production generating the bulk of the exported minerals, and small-scale...
Book Chapter
Terms of Trade and Growth of Resource Economies
The current paper demonstrates a dichotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade, employing as case studies the two African countries, Botswana and Nigeria. Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of...
Journal Article
Optimum Reserve Size, Fishing Induced Change in Carrying Capacity, and Phenotypic Diversity
Fish stocks around the world are heavily overexploited in spite of fishing policies in several parts of the world designed to limit overfishing. Recent studies have found that the complexity of ecological systems and the diversity of species, as well...
Working Paper
Changing Income Inequality and Structural Transformation
In Sub-Saharan Africa we find some of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. Nevertheless, we generally know very little about the historical development of inequality. In this paper we look at how inequality developed in colonial and...
Working Paper
A Hybrid Approach to Incorporating Climate Change and Variability into Climate Scenario for Impact Assessments
Traditional ‘delta-change’ approach of scenario generation for climate change impact assessment to water resources strongly depends on the selected base-case observed historical climate conditions that the climate shocks are to be super-imposed. This...
Working Paper
New industrial policy and the extractive industries
Industrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge...
Working Paper
The role of governance and international norms in managing natural resources
The governance of natural resource wealth is widely considered to constitute a key determinant in whether the extraction of natural resources proves to be a blessing or a curse. What is meant by governance can span a wide range of components, while...
Working Paper
The Economics Of Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper, a draft from the early stages of an ongoing UNU/WIDER research project, outlines hypotheses for the economic cause of humanitarian disasters. Complex humanitarian emergencies are considered to be man-made crises, in which large numbers of...
Working Paper
Resource Abundance and Economic Development
Since the 1960s the resource-rich developing economies have under-performed compared with the resource-deficient economies. This paper explains why and outlines the reforms that are required in order to achieve environmentally and socially...
Working Paper
A Land Cursed by its Wealth?
In Angola, the availability of two abundant resources (oil and diamonds) has prolonged the conflict beyond its Cold War context. The geography and political economy of these resources were crucial to the course taken by the conflict. Matching the...
Working Paper
The IMF Model and Resource-Abundant Transition Economies
The IMF model of the economic transition stresses the role of macro policy reform. It concludes that rapid reform to a market economy is preferable to slow reform because late reformers experience very steep transition recessions and severe...
Working Paper
Natural Resources and Economic Growth
The paper begins by offering a quick glance of the Nordic economies and of some aspects of their economic growth performance and natural resource dependence since 1970. Thereafter, it reviews some of the main symptoms of the Dutch disease, and then...
Working Paper
A Macroeconomic Model of a Developing Country Endowed with a Natural Resource
The present paper presents a short-run theoretical macroeconomic model of the type suggested in Sachs (1996), attempting to differentiate economic development in East Asia with Latin America. Latin America, when compared to East Asia is said to...
Working Paper
Resource-Led Growth - A Long-Term Perspective
Resource-Led Growth - A Long-Term Perspective surveys the 1870-1914 experience of growth in resource-rich economies: the so-called regions of recent settlement, some tropical countries and some mineral-based export economies. First, three contrasting...
Working Paper
Rowing against the current
The exploitation of natural resources is a huge opportunity, but one that carries considerable risks. Relative prices in resource-exporting economies tend to push them towards economic structures dominated by the resource sector. This paper explores...
Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
This issue contains seven articles addressing the major changes underway in the integration of economies in southern Africa. This special issue is based on the UNU-WIDER project 'Regional growth and development in Southern Africa'. This project aims...
Working Paper
Understanding the boom
There are large volumes of gas offshore Tanzania, which has raised hopes of a boom. But those hopes look set to be disappointed. A boom would depend on there being a sizeable flow of revenue to government from producing and exporting gas. This paper...
Working Paper
Understanding the boom
A significant natural resource discovery creates excited popular expectations of imminent wealth. But the size of a boom is usually overestimated and the delay in receiving revenues is underestimated. This paper takes stock of the sequencing, timing...
Working Paper
Construction and public procurement in Uganda
As it transitions to an oil-producing country, Uganda’s investments in infrastructure and physical capital will increasingly depend on the ability of the construction sector to respond to surges in demand and transform investment effort into outcomes...
Working Paper
Foreign Direct Investment in Africa
Data from several investor surveys suggest that macroeconomic instability, investment restrictions, corruption and political instability have a negative impact on foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa. However, the relationship between FDI and...
Working Paper
Humanitarian Emergencies and Warlord Economies in Liberia and Sierra Leone
This paper explains correlations between humanitarian emergencies and political economies of 'failing states' in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both, Cold War era rulers acquired personal power through their influence over economic exchange...
Journal Article
Gender Implications of Biofuels Expansion in Africa
We use a gendered dynamic CGE model to assess the implications of biofuels expansion in a low-income, land-abundant setting. Mozambique is chosen as a representative case. We compare scenarios with different gender employment intensities in producing...
Working Paper
A look offshore: unpacking the routes of misinvoicing in international trade
We study whether misinvoicing in international trade is reflected in cross-border bank accounts as reported by offshore financial centres. We show that residents hold more offshore wealth when local misinvoicing practices thrive, especially for under...
Working Paper
Good institutions and tax revenue outcomes in resource-rich countries
Developing countries that experience commodity booms struggle to mobilize sustainable tax revenues. Emerging literature on the subject notwithstanding, there is limited exploration of the specific types of institutions critical for improving fiscal...
Technical Note
Government Revenue Dataset (2021): country notes
This technical note is the third in a series based on the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset (GRD). The preceding notes have described in detail the variables contained within the GRD and the source selection procedures. In this technical note, we...