Journal Article
IMF and Economic Reform in Developing Countries
In this paper we assess the IMF approach to economic reform in developing countries. The impact of IMF program participation on economic growth has been evaluated empirically in a cross-country literature, with little evidence of IMF programs having...
Policy Brief
Enhancing Development through Policy Coherence
Policy coherence implies that donors in pursuing domestic policy objectives should avoid adversely affecting the development prospects of poor countries. To achieve policy coherence donors and multilateral institutions need to ensure security and...
Journal Article
Property Rights and Productivity
This paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in Vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife. Using a plot-fixed-effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title...
Journal Article
Weather Shocks and Cropland Decisions in Rural Mozambique
Economic development in low income settings is often associated with an expansion of higher-value agricultural activities. Since these activities often bring new risks, an understanding of cropland decisions and how these interact with shocks is...
Research Brief
A colonial legacy?
The presence of European colonial powers in Africa has left a long-lasting legacy that has severely impacted their development trajectories. But what are the lingering effects of colonization on economic performance, in particular with regard to...
Journal Article
Institutions and African Economies
This article presents an overview of the current special issue ‘Institutions and African Economies’. The findings include: (1) greater prevalence of democratic regimes improved both agricultural productivity and the overall growth of African...
Journal Special Issue
FDI, Employment, and Growth in China and India
The project centers on the inter-linkages between the major developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China's growth on smaller economies and the rest of the...
Journal Special Issue
Development Aid
Following on WIDER's work on Development Finance which has involved three projects since 2002, a development conference on 'Aid: Principles, Policies and Performance' was organized in June 2006. Aid is one of the most challenging development issues...
Report
Aid in a Post-2015 World
The ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid – programme produced 247 original studies. More than 300 researchers from 59 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred...
Working Paper
Ghana
Ghana is relatively rare among Sub-Saharan African countries in having had sustained positive growth every year since the mid-1980s. This paper analyses the nature of the growth and then presents an analysis of the evolution of both consumption...
Working Paper
Growth and Poverty Reduction in Tanzania
After many years of relatively slow growth, Tanzania’s national accounts data report accelerated aggregate growth since around 2000. Our analysis shows that there has been somewhat slower growth in private consumption and in sectors such as...
Working Paper
A Quest for Institutional Foundations Towards Inclusive Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
The paper explores the paths towards building institutional foundations for inclusive development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Viewing institutional configurations as a system of multiple equilibria, the concepts of endogenous institutions and...
Working Paper
Aid, education policy, and development
This paper discusses the recent history of education aid policy. It highlights an important shift in policy thinking in the international aid architecture that has dominated the global education aid agenda since the early 1990s. It argues that...
Working Paper
An Uncertainty Approach to Modelling Climate Change Risk in South Africa
This study represents the first attempt at an integrated approach to assessing the potential impacts of climate change on the national economy of South Africa via a number of (but not necessarily all) impact channels. The study focuses on outcomes by...
Working Paper
Mozambique
Since 1994, a great deal has been accomplished. We argue that poverty reduction was temporarily sidelined in the 2000s. A series of shocks, especially the fuel and food price crisis of 2008, combined with poor productivity growth in agriculture and a...
Policy Brief
Inequality, Growth and Poverty in the Era of Liberalization and Globalization
This policy brief reports the main findings of the study on changes in within-country income inequality over the last two decades and on the links between poverty, inequality, and growth. It focuses on inequality at the national level, i.e. the...
Policy Brief
Mobilizing Talent for Global Development
Talent (combining creativity, education, skills, and knowledge) is associated with human capital and provides a very valuable economic resource. In the past, the emigration of human capital from developing countries raised fears because of the...
Policy Brief
Linking Globalization to Poverty in Asia, Latin America and Africa
Despite the enormous potential of globalization in accelerating economic growth through greater integration into the world economy the impact of globalization on poverty reduction has been uneven. Asia has been the major beneficiary of globalization...
Policy Brief
Promoting Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries
This policy brief provides some fresh perspectives on the relationship between entrepreneurship and development, and considers policy design issues. It reports on the UNU-WIDER two-year research project 'Promoting Entrepreneurial Capacity', which...
Policy Brief
The Global Impact of the Southern Engines of Growth
This Policy Brief focuses on links between the developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s spectacular growth on developing economies and the rest of the...
Journal Special Issue
Entrepreneurship, Developing Countries and Development Economics
We are pleased to announce a Special Issue of the Small Business Economics Journal on Entrepreneurship, Developing Countries and Development Economics, guest edited by Wim Naudé. With more than a billion people living in absolute poverty it is of...
Journal Special Issue
Explaining Violent Conflict
Recent years have seen a surge of research into the causes of conflict together with its development effects, as well as the design of peace initiatives, peace-keeping and programmes of reconstruction, reconciliation and democratization in ‘post...
Journal Special Issue
Conflict and Peace-building
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for the UN system as well as the wider donor community. National authorities and their donor partners are faced with multiple priorities - rebuilding infrastructure...
Research Brief
Clustering, competition, and spillover effects in Cambodia
What types of businesses benefit or suffer due to geographic clustering? Data available from Cambodia on competition and spillovers—at both village- and commune-level—is useful to answer a number of questions about the effects of clustering and the...
Research Brief
Measures of inequality
The majority of income inequality occurs at the tails of the income distribution The Gini coefficient does not provide a representative measure of income inequality When the top 10% of income earners expand their share of national income it often...
Journal Special Issue
Well-being Achievements in Pacific Asia
Summary measures of human well-being are increasingly used to compare and monitor performance within and across countries. The UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI) is one of a number of measures which have done much to refocus attention on the...