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Publications (29)
Working Paper
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Efforts to realize the issue of development-focused Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been on-going for many years. Recently, however, the campaign first gained a new momentum immediately after the Asian financial crises with the new liquidity problems of...
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– Issues and Evidence
Remittances, after foreign direct investment, are currently the most important source of external finance to developing countries. Remittances surpass foreign aid, and tend to be more stable than such volatile capital flows as portfolio investment and international bank credit. Remittances are also...
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– Over-Arching Issues
In analysing proposals for new sources of development funding, there are several issues that arise across the board. What is the role of new sources in relation to existing overseas development assistance? Should we be seeking new sources that generate a double dividend? Can the key elements of a...
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This paper considers lessons from the practice of fiscal federalism for guidance on new approaches to development finance. Despite the fact that inter-regional redistribution in a federation relies on a central government with strong fiscal powers, the form of that redistribution can be used as a...
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This paper considers the role of global environmental taxes both as instruments for improving the global environment and as a source of revenue for funding economic development. It reviews the general case for environmental taxes and the particular issues that arise for the adoption of such taxes in...
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Charitable donations by private individuals and firms can help fund the Millennium Development Goals. What are the prospects for increasing donations for international development, whether from small-scale donors, the super-rich (as in the recent gifts by Bill Gates and Ted Turner), or the corporate...
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– A Critical Appraisal
The paper assesses the potential of currency transaction taxes (CTT, widely known as the Tobin tax), to raise revenue for global development. Though Tobin proposed and others assessed CTTs in terms of reducing exchange rate volatility and improving macroeconomic policy environments, this paper...
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The world lottery market now amounts to at least US$126 billion in sales. World market sales for all gaming products (public, charitable and commercial) total some US$1 trillion, of which Internet gambling accounts for US$32 billion. This paper assesses the prospects for harnessing this large and...
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– The UK HM Treasury-DFID Proposal to Increase External Finance to Developing Countries
The paper discusses the International Finance Facility (IFF), a joint HM Treasury–DFID proposal to increase development aid substantially for the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. The main conclusion of the paper is that the proposed IFF is a promising, forward-looking and...
– Going Beyond Greed versus Grievance
Recent years have seen a surge of research into the causes of conflict together with its development effects, as well as the design of peace initiatives, peace-keeping and programmes of reconstruction, reconciliation and democratization in ‘post-conflict’ societies. This research deals with a highly...
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We argue that the conflicts in the Caucasus are the result of the abrogation by the elite of the earlier, Soviet era, social contract. This process was accompanied by the collapse of the formal economy; evidenced by huge national income compression, falling public goods provision, and growing...
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– The Regional Dimensions
Contemporary Africa reveals a range of causes, consequences and responses to conflicts which are increasingly interrelated as well as regional in character, as around the Great Lakes/Horn. Their economic and non-state features are undeniable, leading to some promising possibilities in terms of...
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– Economic Development, Public Policy and Conflict Containment
Conflicts within the Malaysian federation have been rooted in socio-economic disparities and the struggle for control of natural resource rents, which State Governments previously had exclusive control over, as originally provided for by the federal constitution. The advance of fiscal centralization...
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– The Collapse of the Oslo Accord
Since October 2000 Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have become entangled in a bloody confrontation. This paper focuses on the economic relationship between the Israeli economy and the Palestinian economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the ways in which this has...
Previous UNU-WIDER research has shown that the risk of internal conflict is high in low-income societies rich in natural resources and characterised by ethnic fragmentation. Yet for each country in conflict there are many others with similar characteristics that are at peace. Understanding why some...
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This paper discusses some of the principal issues relating to the reconstruction of the financial sector in conflict-affected countries, focusing on currency reform, the rebuilding (or creation) of central banks, the revitalization of the banking system, and its prudential supervision and regulation...
Displaying 16 of 29 results