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Publications (34)
Working Paper
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The interest in the level of global inequality has surged in recent years. This paper complements existing estimates of global inequality by providing the first estimates of the level of bipolarization of the global income distribution. During 1975–2010, global bipolarization declined substantially...
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– Causes and consequences
This paper re-examines the determinants and consequences of redistribution in light of improved data and methods relative to earlier literature. In particular, we use the latest version of the UNU-WIDER’s Income Inequality Database to have the best available estimates of both pre- and post...
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– How large is the effect of top incomes?
In this paper, we estimate the recent evolution of global interpersonal inequality and examine the effect of omitted top incomes on the level and direction of global inequality. We propose a methodology to estimate the truncation point of household surveys by combining information on income shares...
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Institutions are altered by conflict, depending on the scale, duration and type of war. At one extreme, formal political, social and economic institutions may be completely destroyed (e.g. Somalia), while the importance and type of informal institutions may be changed. This survey addresses some of...
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Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system, thereby undermining the sustainability of...
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– Lessons from Eritrea
With the Derg's overthrow in 1991, Eritrea embarked on the construction of a new state. New economic institutions were created, and considerable reform undertaken. Problems in co-ordinating reform and reconstruction were largely avoided, mainly because of the institutional ‘clean slate’ facing the...
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Privatization, together with liberalization and deregulation, constituted the core of Mozambique's economic transition. Privatization in Mozambique has taken place on an unusually large scale in comparison with the rest of Africa. Privatization interacted with military demobilization and political...
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In 1991, the new Government of Ethiopia faced a triple fiscal challenge. First, a major effort was required to overhaul and modernize the tax system. Second, the need to switch expenditure from military to civilian uses had to take place within a potentially severely reduced resource total. The...
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Ethiopia is one of a number of SSA economies that adopted state-led development strategies in the 1970s (others include Angola and Mozambique), and suffered from intense conflict (leading to the fall of the Derg regime in 1991). The new government was therefore faced with the twin tasks of...
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Angola’s difficulties in achieving macro-economic stability and economic liberalization have serious implications for private-sector development. Hyperinflation, and frequent policy reversal, constrain and distort investment in both the informal and formal parts of the private sector. But macro...
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Since large-scale programmes of post-war resettlement and reintegration are costly, it is important to learn the lessons of the resettlement programme started after the end of Eritrea's liberation war in 1991. Eritrea's system of land tenure largely facilitated resettlement (although long-term...
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The list of illnesses afflicting Angolan society is a long one: political instability, civil war, macroeconomic mismanagement, and the desperation born of poverty. A profound sense of uncertainty afflicts all levels of society-the government (and its opponents), entrepreneurs and rural and urban...
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– Communities, Entrepreneurs, and States
Africa has become synonymous with conflict. There were armed conflicts in 16 of Africa's 54 countries in 1999. For Africa to recover, communities must reconstruct, private sectors must revitalize, and states must transform themselves. Aid donors, NGOs, and international business can do much to help...
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Governments frequently compartmentalize issues of reform and reconstruction into separate strategies and separate ministries (the fate of poverty reduction as well). Donors do likewise, for each has its own responsibilities; the IMF focuses on reform, the UN concentrates on conflict resolution and...
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The economic policies of transition and reconstruction in Mozambique, like the policies of central planning beforehand, were based on an inappropriate model of the inherited rural economy. Under central planning, the peasantry was looked upon as a mass of subsistence producers; with the economic...
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A critical task is to construct a development state-a set of democratically-accountable institutions capable of effective policy design and implementation. The new state agenda is ambitious and resource intensive. It cannot therefore be achieved unless the fiscal crisis of the African state is...
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