Research Brief
Policy processes and the global food price crisis 2007-08
The recent food price crisis and the responses of the policy makers in developing countries provide an unprecedented opportunity to analyse the policy processes in these countries. Policy responses differed depending on the nature and magnitude of...
Working Paper
Achieving Development Success
This paper provides a synthesis of successful strategies and implied lessons for development success, employing at least six themes on in-depth case studies of a large number of developing countries around the world. The coverage includes East Asia...
Journal Article
Poverty Reduction and Economic Structure
While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth–poverty accounting and...
Journal Article
Can Africa Industrialise?
Africa needs structural change to sustain growth. Industry with and without smoke stacks is key, but Africa has deindustrialised since the 1970s. Can Africa industrialise? Rising costs and domestic demand in Asia offer an opportunity. However, trade...
Working Paper
An Aggregate View of Macroeconomic Shocks in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper investigates the impacts and responses of macroeconomic shocks in some domestic economies in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1961-99; more specifically, it seeks to answer the question of whether there are any systematic differences in...
Working Paper
Benchmarking Sustainable Development
The need for monitoring countries’ overall performance in sustainable development (SD) is widely recognized, but the methods for aggregating vast amounts of empirical data remain rather crude. This paper examines the so-called ‘benefit of doubt’...
Working Paper
Income-based Measures of Average Well-being
International comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy...
Working Paper
Asian Donor Support for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
Since the 1990s, gender mainstreaming has been a widely accepted strategy for promoting gender equality within governments, multilateral agencies, and development NGOs, although critics continue to question its premises and results. This paper...
Working Paper
Central Asia after Two Decades of Independence
After becoming independent in 1991, the five Central Asian countries pursued differing transition paths from the defunct central planning. This paper analyses the connection between economic policies and performance during the 1990s and 2000s...
Book
The Poor under Globalization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
This volume presents thirteen studies selected from the three regional conferences organized under the auspices of UNU-WIDER. They illustrate the differential effects of globalization on growth, inequality, and poverty in Asia, Latin America, and...