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...