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Publications (58)
Working Paper
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– An application to Tanzania
We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Because this method uses an integral of the partial derivatives of a poverty measure with respect to time, the resulting poverty decomposition satisfies time-reversion consistency and sub-period additivity...
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– Are There Lessons for Countries in Africa?
Brazil’s recent growth has been intensely pro-poor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. It has been suggested that Brazil’s unexpected successes are the outcome of a new model of development. The paper argues that Brazil’s unique combination of economic...
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– Comparing Objective and Subjective Poverty Rates in South Africa
In this paper, we compare subjective and money-metric measures of poverty in South Africa using data collected in the 2008/09 Living Conditions Survey. In addition to collecting detailed information on expenditure, the survey asked respondents to provide an assessment of the economic status of their...
Working Paper
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This paper, using a new set of social development indices, explores the measurement of social development across Africa, and how this relates to broader development patterns and measurement. Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize the importance of informal institutions, such as...
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– Analysis with evidence from Swaziland
The shortages of entrepreneurial skills have lowered search effectiveness of potential young entrepreneurs and the rate of youth start-ups. Our paper contributes to closing the gap in the entrepreneurship and development literature with a model of costly firm creation and skill differences between...
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This paper examines the changing nature of occupational labour-market trends in South Africa and the resulting impact on wages. We observe high levels of demand for skilled labour that have intensified a trend already established before 1994. Over the period 2001-12 employment within the primary...
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– Evidence from a Panel Survey of Tanzania
This paper investigates the impact of income and non-income shocks on child labour using a model in which the household maximizes utility from consumption as well as human capital development of the child. Two types of shocks are considered: agricultural shocks as an income shock and the death of a...
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A cash transfer programme ‘Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty’ has been implemented with the aim of addressing poverty and vulnerability in Ghana. This study looks at the impact of this conditional cash transfer programme on households’ supply of labour for agriculture, paid employment, and non...
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– Micro-Level Evidence
This paper studies individual-level labour market transitions and their determinants in South Africa during the zenith and aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis using 2008 to 2010-2011 panel data from the National Income Dynamics Study and matched cross-sections of the Quarterly...
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– Interpreting Trends in the Data Over the Past Two Decades
This paper reviews the current problems of national accounting in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the current uneven application of methods and availability of data, any ranking of countries according to gross domestic product levels is misleading. It is increasingly acknowledged that the problems...
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This paper investigates inequalities across the major black ethnic groups in South Africa, accounting for 80 per cent of the country’s population. We demonstrate that there is an important ethnic gap in the poverty levels of the Xhosa and the Zulu with respect to the Sotho/Tswana. We also show that...
Blog
26 March 2014 Roger Williamson Africa is growing, with The Economist noting that 6 out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economies for 2000-10 were in Africa. But how optimistic should we be? UNU-WIDER’s new research priorities for 2014-18 are transformation, inclusion, and sustainability. All...
Blog
24 September 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén At the recent UNU-WIDER conference here in Helsinki on inclusive growth in Africa, the quality of national accounts was hotly debated. Part of the conference was focused on innovative methods, theories and empirical approaches to measuring poverty, inequality and...
Blog
24 September 2013 Roger Williamson Another big weekend for UNU-WIDER. The stage was well set on Thursday 19 September for a consideration of inequality and poverty in Africa, at the 17th WIDER Annual Lecture by former Finnish President Ahtisaari on 'Egalitarian Principles–the foundation for stable...
Blog
9 May 2013 Carl-Gustav Lindén The world is a complex place where risk and uncertainty are an everyday challenge. Decision makers at all levels say they are drowning in information; they are longing for clarity and knowledge, rather than conflicting information and opinions. The complexity challenge...
– ICT Opportunities and Challenges
Within the last three decades, industrialization, and manufacturing in particular, has decreased in importance as the principal driver of economic growth and development in the world economy. The expansion of the service sector in industrialized societies reflects the increasing significance of the...
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– Are Developing Countries Different?
Factors determining the diffusion of digital mobile telephony across 200 developed and developing countries in the 1990s are studied with the aid of a Gompertz model. The market size and network effects are found to play more important roles in the developing countries; there is also more need for...
Policy Brief
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The rise of the new economy is undeniable. Yet its impact on the development process is still to be fully understood. Investment in ICT itself is not sufficient to ensure longterm improvements in social well-being but requires other factors that result in an enabling environment in which progress...
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– The Importance of ICT and Democratization
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased dramatically in recent years. However, the distribution of FDI is highly unequal and very poor countries face major difficulties in attracting foreign investors. This paper investigates the determinants of FDI inflows to developing countries, with a...
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A firm’s business model describes the way in which it creates, delivers, and appropriates value. In the debate about the ongoing demise of several e-commerce ventures, only a few analysts have looked at the relative sanity of innovative e-business Models, relying mostly on static environmental...
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– A Critical Review
This paper offers a critical review of the conventional economic classification, measurement and valuation of output, and related performance indicators, for the service sector. The paper also explores and contrasts long-standing views on the service knowledge base and service innovations, as well...
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– Is It an IT Story?
This paper examines trends in idiosyncratic risk in different ‘new economy’ and ‘old economy’ industries, and explores whether these developments can be attributed to the use of IT. A CAPM-based decomposition of equity returns is employed to estimate idiosyncratic risk. The results provide evidence...
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This paper assesses the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on the economic performance of small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) of three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Findings of the paper suggest that the diffusion of ICT among East...
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– Regime Formation and the Impact on Africa
This paper combines a theoretical perspective on globalization and the information society with a critical usage of international regime theory in order to contribute to a better understanding of the current historical period of transition from an international telecommunications regime to a new and...
Working Paper
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The pervasiveness of the illegal copying of software is a worldwide phenomenon. Software piracy implies a huge loss of potential customers of original software buyers, which directly translates into revenue losses for the software industry. Given this, conventional wisdom would suggest the need for...
Working Paper
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We examine the relationship between the directly observable indicator of new technology, ICT investment ratio, and skill upgrading by analysing changes in employment and wage structure of 25 Korean industrial sectors over the 1993-99 period. The results show that there has been little relationship...
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– A Firm-level Economic Analysis of Selected Indian Industries under Economic Liberalization
The economic liberalization in India was expected to boost the economy, particularly the industrial sector through faster technological development. The Schumpeterian hypothesis, which studies the relationship between market structure variables such as firm size and market concentration and their...
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– Economic and Institutional Determinants
The purpose of the study is two-fold. First, it examines whether Internet usage converges across the geographical space comprising the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Second, it aims to expand the currently rather limited empirical evidence on the determinants of Internet usage...
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We study the determinants of stock market development and the growing migration of capital raising, listing, and trading activity to international exchanges. Economies with higher income per capita, sounder macro policies, more efficient legal systems with better shareholder protection, and more...
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– Pros and Cons of an Inward-Orientated Development Strategy
The software and information services (SIS) sector is at the heart of the New Economy and has been rapidly growing through the whole world during the last decades. This is also the case in Argentina where in the middle of a deep recession, the turnover of the sector augmented by 40 per cent and...
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This paper reviews the obstacles for an appropriate financial architecture of new economy firms in developing countries by reviewing the theoretical and some preliminary empirical underpinnings of the importance of legal and institutional barriers. Apart from the more conventional institutional and...
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– Determinants of Internet Adoption
This paper shows how organizational, technical, and environmental factors affected firm decisions to adopt Internet technologies during the early years of the commercialization of the Internet. Organizations that had made prior investments in client/server networks had a higher likelihood of...
Displaying 32 of 58 results