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Publications (22)
Despite the rapid expansion of social protection across the Global South in recent decades, the ILO (2021: 19) estimates that more than half of the global population still have no access to any form of protection against poverty vulnerability and social exclusion. Globally, the share of aid that...
Working Paper
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This study conducts an international comparative analysis of the recent evolution of social protection systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, paying particular attention to the role of foreign aid in these dynamics. It asks: Has...
Working Paper
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– The political economy of compliance
This paper explores the link between trust in government, policy-making, and compliance. It focuses on a specific channel whereby citizens who are convinced that a policy is worthwhile are more motivated to comply with it. This in turn reduces the government’s cost of implementing a policy and may...
More than half of the world’s population has no access to social safety nets or social insurance. What is international development aid doing to address this? This study demonstrates that, while international aid has contributed to the expansion of social safety net programmes in poor countries, the...
On the third day of the annual UNU-WIDER Conference on 8 September, RISE presented findings from three studies on COVID-19's impact on education systems. These studies underline the urgent need to remediate learning losses, but they also illustrate how systems can ‘build back better’. RISE’s panel...
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, and...
The opening keynote of the recent WIDER Development Conference, COVID-19 and development – effects and new realities for the Global South, was given by Oriana Bandiera, Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, an accomplished economist with several awards under...
The World Bank recently estimated that two-thirds of all jobs in developing countries are at risk of automation. This shocking statistic raises an important question: ‘What can policy makers do to prepare for this tech revolution?’ From 11-13 September UNU-WIDER hosted our 2019 WIDER Development...
– Views from Experts
13 September through 15 September 2018, UNU-WIDER hosted the Think development - Think WIDER conference in Helsinki, Finland. Over three days, participants from fifty-nine countries gathered at the Marina Congress Center to discuss the past, present, and future of development economics and the field...
It’s early July and I’m back in Maputo, Mozambique, looking over the calm sea at the boats that fish the waters for the seafood that makes visiting this part of Africa such a treat. The sunset here is a delicate combination of pale turquoise, light grey, and warm pink. Coming from the Finnish summer...
Blog
In my last blog I wrote about the common factors at play in political and economic transitions. Using the case of South Sudan, I demonstrated how these factors laid the groundwork for a fragility trap. In this post, I explain what this means. Trap begins with missed opportunities for reforms In the...
What does it mean to be a fragile state? According to the IMF, fragile states are those in ‘which the government is unable to reliably deliver basic public services to the population – [they] face severe and entrenched obstacles to economic and human development.’ It is with this understanding that...
No country is immune from unexpected crises, such as sudden breakouts of violence, war, or natural disasters. Even if some can be predicted, experience shows that the intensity, scale, and geographic spread of crises cannot be forecast with any kind of certainty. One particularly vulnerable group...
Every single day, approximately 830 women die from causes related to childbirth. Despite considerable advances in maternal health over the last three decades (Hogan et al. 2010) as well as worldwide commitment to reducing maternal deaths, sufficient reductions have not been achieved. These deaths...
Blog
The ‘Responding to crises’ conference was marked by wide range of topics. Opening the event was former Finnish Defence Minister and UN Special Rapporteur, Elisabeth Rehn, who gave us the benefit of her experience, not least in the impact of war on women and girls, and the need to follow up on the...
I had the pleasure of attending UNU-WIDER’s ‘Responding to crises’ conference last week. The theme was highly topical and session topics far-reaching, which makes the task of teasing out core ideas difficult. It may seem, as a result, that research on crises occurs in silos. However, as a poverty...
Displaying 16 of 22 results