Publications (7717)

BOOK IN PRODUCTION — SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION NOVEMBER 2021 | Social mobility — defined as the ability to move from a lower to a higher level of education or occupational status, or from a lower to a higher social class or income group — is the hope of economic...

The next decade is a make-or-break for the world’s most vulnerable countries. To tackle the unprecedented confluence of COVID-19, climate, and economic crises, new solutions are desperately needed. Scientific research is one key for finding long-lasting solutions. Least developed...

The situation of Afghanistan has drawn a picture of a poor, conflict-prone, doomed country. But this does not have to be the case. We have examples of several countries able to rise out of poverty, despite conflicts, climate challenges, or large population. International co-operation for...

At the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, world leaders discussed the need to scale-up ambition to address key global challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, political extremism, and widening inequality. With less than two weeks to go before the COP26...

The economic decline of Nauru, an island in the Central Pacific, is a cautionary tale. Nauru was the highest GDP per capita country in the world in the 1970s, due to the value of its phosphate deposits. A few decades later, the country reached the brink of economic collapse when its phosphate...

The transition to net zero over the next few decades will involve a large increase in the global demand for many metals essential to the renewables revolution driving that transition. Recent research by the World Bank has identified a minimum of 17 main metals needed in significant quantities for...

Tanzania, similar to most sub-Saharan countries, reported its first COVID-19 cases in March 2020. While GDP estimates suggest that the economy was less hard hit than in other African countries, some sectors have nevertheless experienced negative growth. Even with contained GDP contractions in...

Around the world, the pandemic, and the measures taken to address it, have had far reaching effects on poverty, inequality, and governance.  And even as the need for global action has increased, many wealthy countries have turned inwards — with closed borders, stockpiling of vaccines,...

In 2020, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused an economic crisis that disrupted the Ugandan labour market. How large were the associated income losses across different industries and population groups? To what extent did the general tax-benefit system mitigate the adverse effects of the...

The first cases of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa were reported in March 2020, and the impact of the pandemic has since rippled through the world and Africa. In response to the crisis and similarly to many of its peers, Ghana has enacted a variety of containment measures to confront the pandemic...

Mozambique reported its first case of COVID-19 on 22 March 2020. GDP estimates suggest a strong pandemic effect, with a reduction in seven of nine business sectors analysed. However, the agriculture sector, one of the most important, experienced a 9% increase, which may have cushioned the...

In summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and avoiding societies from becoming more unequal. Now we are releasing a cross-country comparative study that analyses the distributional effects of...

Zambia’s economic growth has been flattening over the past decade. In 2020 economic prospects further worsened, following the onset of the pandemic, rising debt, and the Eurobond default. In this unprecedented scenario, there is the need to examine impacts on welfare and the mitigation role...