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Publications (13)
Blog
In this interview Professor Nora Lustig, Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics at Tulane University, talks about the importance of assessing the quality of income inequality data, the reasons behind the declining trend in income inequality in Latin America, and the Commitment to...
Blog
At the UNU-WIDER Inequality conference September 2014 we interviewed Murray Leibbrandt, Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town on issues of inequality in South Africa. Leibrant begins by positing that South Africa, like Brazil, is a microcosm of the world. This comment picks up on the...
Blog
– Country Comparisons and Conceptual Approaches
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson In an earlier article I reviewed a number of the high-profile contributions to the September 2014 conference on inequality. It is now time to dig deeper into the material presented at the event. This article features a few of the country case studies and...
Elites have a disproportionate impact on development outcomes. While a country's endowments constitute the deep determinates of growth, the trajectory they follow is shaped by the actions of elites. But what factors affect whether elites use their influence for individual gain or national welfare?To...
Blog
29 September 2014 Tony Addison As the Finnish autumn embraces us, we can reflect on a very successful conference on ‘Inequality: Measurement, Trends, Impacts and Policies’, held in Helsinki on 5-6 September. UNU-WIDER welcomed 350+ people from all over the world, with an especially good turnout of...
Blog
26 September 2014 Roger Williamson Huge interest in the WIDER Inequality Conference (5-6 September) Inequality is big news. Whether you think Thomas Piketty’s book is primarily long-run economic history or a prediction of future trends for returns to capital and labour, it is still a surprise that a...
Blog
27 August 2014 Tony Addison Some of you in the northern hemisphere may still be on your well-earned summer breaks. Here at UNU-WIDER we had a pause in July—for a very warm Finnish summer—after our very successful June conference in Hanoi. It is now full speed ahead for our conference on ‘Inequality...
– The Long-Run View
The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has stimulated much reflection on the political, economic and social transitions that have taken place in the past two decades. Many Central European and Baltic countries initially appeared to epitomize a successful transition to markets and...
Elites have a disproportionate impact on development outcomes. While a country's endowments constitute the deep determinates of growth, the trajectory they follow is shaped by the actions of elites.But what factors affect whether elites use their influence for individual gain or national welfare? To...
Blog
– Some Lessons on Transition
Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London was the setting on 19 June 2012 for the launch of the recent UNU-WIDER book Economies in Transition: The Long-Run View, edited by Gerárd Roland, and published by Palgrave Macmillan. The event kicked off...
Blog
– Twenty Years after the Fall of The Berlin Wall
Gérard Roland The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki in September 2009. The conference involved a group of top scholars who have done research on the process of transition from socialism to capitalism...
Blog
– The Travails of East Germany’s Economic Transition
Charles S. Maier When the Berlin Wall fell, twenty years ago, on 9 November 1989, many expected that the East German (German Democratic Republic - DDR) transition would be amongst the easier transitions. Unification with one of the most powerful West European economies provided it with a highly...
Blog
Alice Amsden, Alisa DiCaprio, and James Robinson To understand what role elites play in the process of economic development, we need to establish first who they are. Though most definitions are welfare neutral, in popular discourse elites take on a negative connotation. This conceptual confusion has...
Displaying 13 of 13 results