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Publications (32)
– Concept and Measurement
Human well-being is a core global issue. Achieving and sustaining higher levels of well-being is challenge for individual citizens, governments and international organisations world-wide. Measures of human well-being levels are an integral part of this process, being used increasingly to monitor and...
Policy Brief
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This Policy Brief is an outcome of the UNU-WIDER research project 'Social Development Indicators'. The overall aim of the project was to provide insights into how human well-being might be better conceptualized and, in particular, measured, by reviewing various concepts and measures and then...
With more than a billion people living on less than one dollar per day, human well-being is a core issue for both researchers and policy-makers. The Millennium Development Goals are a powerful reminder of this point. We now know more about human well-being and the related concepts of poverty and...
– Concepts and Policies
The concepts of formal and informal remain central to the theory and practice of development more than half a century after they were introduced into the debate. They help structure the way that statistical services collect data on the economies of developing countries, the development of...
With more than a billion people living on less than one dollar per day, some evidence of increasing gaps in living conditions within and between countries and the clear evidence of substantial declines in life expectancy or other health outcomes in some parts of the world, the related topics of...
This book presents significant new research on the informal labour markets of developing countries. Examining the critical role of informal labour markets in allowing countries to adjust successfully to the forces of globalization, this volume also brings to the fore a number of problems associated...
Summary measures of human well-being are increasingly used to compare and monitor performance within and across countries. The UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI) is one of a number of measures which have done much to refocus attention on the importance of non-monetary measures of human progress...
Working Paper
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Determining whether well-being has improved is an important multidisciplinary task. It is important therefore to develop a multidimensional measure of well-being that reflects a wide spectrum of human needs. A new approach is presented in this paper based on multidimensional hierarchical human needs...
Working Paper
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– a Case Study of the Mekong Lowlands
In river basins around the world, formal agreements based on international watercourse law are seen as important mechanisms for promoting sustainability and cooperation. While such agreements have been effective in avoiding conflict between states in the short-term, success at the international...
Working Paper
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– Some Evidence from Indonesian Posyandus
This study attempts to determine the extent to which human potential may be unlocked by government or other formal sector actions that induce voluntary contributions by individuals to the activities of Indonesia’s posyandus or village health posts. Posyandus have been an important feature of...
Working Paper
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One of the most notable phenomena during economic transition is the shrinkage of the public sector and expansion of the not working population, simultaneously with the expansion of both the formal and informal private sectors. We address the related labour dynamics of the pre and post 1996 crisis in...
Working Paper
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– The Mexican Agenda
Public policy aimed at building capacity among the extremely poor (support for food and nutrition; health; education and, more recently, financial services), combined with a stable macroeconomic environment, has proved to be successful for poverty alleviation in Mexico. Even though overall poverty...
Working Paper
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– the Origins and Consequences of Policy Incoherence Toward Informal Traders
Almost twenty years have passed since researchers from the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru showed how ‘bad laws’ impose disproportionate costs on those who choose formality. Although a multitude of conflicting regulations still precludes effective governance of informal trade in Lima...
Working Paper
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This paper investigates how people created, adapted and used social capital and conflict resolution during more than a decade of violent conflict in Liberia, and the potential of such capital to contribute to post-conflict peacebuilding and self-governance.
Working Paper
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– a Case Study for Urban Burkina Faso
Given the current focus of international development policy on pro-poor growth and poverty reduction, the role of the informal sector in the process of economic development is again at the top of the research and policy agenda. A key question is if pro-poor growth policies have to address the...
Working Paper
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– the Case of Cross-Border Commerce in the Horn of Africa
This paper addresses informal cross-border trade in the Horn of Africa, with an emphasis on the Somalia borderlands. It will be shown that despite the collapse of a government in 1991, Somalia’s unofficial exports of cattle to Kenya have grown considerably during the past 13 years. It will be argued...
Displaying 16 of 32 results