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Publications (41)
Working Paper
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Medicine theft is a leading cause of inadequate healthcare. Audits of public health supply chains suggest that up to a third of medicines go missing in low-income countries, disproportionately affecting those facing greater health risks and poverty. Despite much investment, policy-makers struggle to...
Working Paper
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– Receiving more, expecting less?
Are candidates who hand out clientelistic goods at election time less likely to provide services once they take office? This paper examines the poor’s expectations of future service provision by candidates who hand out money and other goods versus those who do not. We hypothesize that the poor’s...
Working Paper
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Interest in industrial hemp has revived in the past 20 years. Malawi is considering legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp as an alternative cash crop to tobacco with great potential.This study considers the potential and challenges of creating an industrial hemp value chain between South...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– The case of four African countries
Part of Journal Special Issue
Inequalities in the least developed countries
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– The cases of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia
We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the economic interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic modeling that incorporates climate uncertainty and...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
This issue contains seven articles addressing the major changes underway in the integration of economies in southern Africa. This special issue is based on the UNU-WIDER project 'Regional growth and development in Southern Africa'. This project aims to develop, in conjunction with important research...
Working Paper
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– The case of four African countries
This paper investigates the levels and evolution of poverty in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe using the decomposability properties of poverty measures based on a counting approach. We compare poverty measures such as the Alkire and Foster index with alternative poverty indices that are...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Objective To evaluate the impact of a performance-based financing scheme on maternal and neonatal health service quality in Malawi. Methods We conducted a non-randomized controlled before and after study to evaluate the effects of district- and facility-level performance incentives for health...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Measuring quality of care
Working Paper
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Objective: To analyse factors affecting variations in the observed quality of antenatal and sick-child care in primary-care facilities in seven African countries. Methods: We pooled nationally representative data from service provision assessment surveys of health facilities in Kenya, Malawi...
Working Paper
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Competitive elections in many parts of Africa generate powerful incentives to presidential candidates (and to a lesser extent political parties) to brand themselves in ways that transcend regional or ethnic loyalties. In Malawi, Joyce Banda—President from 2012 to 2014—sought to distinguish herself...
Working Paper
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– Competition in road transportation of perishable goods between Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Rapid urbanization and rising income levels in Southern Africa have increased the consumption of perishable and processed food products. This paper relies primarily on firm-level interview data to assess competition and bottlenecks in transporting time-sensitive perishable products across borders...
Working Paper
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– Competition in road transportation between Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Efficient transport links are critical to enhancing the integration of markets in Southern Africa. This paper assesses the structure of markets, competition, and prices and costs of road transportation between urban hubs in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Key findings are...
Working Paper
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– Measuring real inequality using survey data from developing countries
This paper investigates how two effects drive wedges between nominal and real inequality estimates. The effects are caused by (i) differences in the composition of consumption over the income distribution coupled with differential inflation of consumption items; and (ii) quantity discounting effects...
Working Paper
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– The sensitivity of Malawian poverty estimates to definitions, data, and assumptions
This paper decomposes differences between the official poverty estimates of Malawi and a set of revised estimates by Pauw et al. (2016) with respect to five methodological differences: (i) the use of a revised set of unit conversion factors; (ii) the specification and use of regional poverty lines...
Working Paper
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– Cases from the Zambezi River Basin
We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic modeling that incorporates climate uncertainty and allows for...
Working Paper
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– A synthetic control approach
I examine impacts of general budget support in 12 countries using the synthetic control approach. First, I analyse changes in government expenditures on health before and after the introduction of budget support. Second, I look at neonatal mortality (a presumed proxy for improvements in health...
Working Paper
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Effective state-business relations (SBRs) have been lacking in industrial policy thinking despite the strong theoretical case for SBRs. The empirical study of state-business relations in developing countries has emerged only recently, with notable contributions starting in the mid-1990s, developing...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We estimate the impact of Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program using an economy-wide approach. This approach yields benefit-cost ratios about 60% higher than existing partial equilibrium studies, a result of our accounting for indirect benefits. Fertilizer response rates remain the determining...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A Study of Impacts and Adaptations in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia
Part of Journal Special Issue
Climate Change and the Zambezi River Valley
Working Paper
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– Making Sense of Malawi’s Poverty Puzzle
Disappointment was widespread when rapid economic growth since 2005, coupled with a smallholder-targeted fertilizer subsidy program, failed to significantly reduce poverty in Malawi. Official estimates for 2011 showed a 1.7 percentage point decline in national poverty between 2005 and 2011, while...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– An Overview
Recent studies indicate that climate change will negatively impact Africa's growth and development prospects, particularly in the absence of adaptation and mitigation. Losses of up to 4% of Africa's gross domestic product (GDP) are projected, and agriculture is a major economic impact channel given...
Working Paper
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We estimate the impact of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Programme using an economywide approach. We find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two-fifths of total benefits. Due to these indirect benefits, the cut-off at which lower fertilizer yield response...
– An Uncertainty Approach
Malawi confronts a growth and development imperative that it must meet in a context characterised by rising temperatures and deep uncertainty about trends in precipitation. This article evaluates the potential implications of climate change for overall growth and development prospects in Malawi. We...
Working Paper
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– An Uncertainty Approach
Malawi confronts a development imperative in a context of rising temperatures and deep uncertainty about precipitation trends. We evaluate the implications of climate change for overall growth and development prospects to 2050. We focus on three impact channels: agriculture, road infrastructure, and...
– A Micro-simulation
This paper investigates the impact of social transfer programmes on school enrolment and child labour in Malawi utilizing a micro-simulation evaluation method. For this purpose, we simulate four hypothetical scenarios in which a household receives: (1) MK1,040 (US$2.5) for each child enrolled in...
Working Paper
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– a Micro-Simulation
This paper investigates the impact of social transfer programmes on school enrollment and child labour in Malawi utilizing a micro-simulation evaluation method. Four hypothetical cash transfer programmes, differentiated in terms of their conditions on children’s enrollment and gender, are considered...
Working Paper
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– Impacts and Adaptations for the Zambezi River Valley
The African Development Bank has called for US$40 billion per year over the coming decades to be provided to African countries to address development issues directly related to climate change. The current study addresses a key component of these issues, the effect of climate change on the road...
Working Paper
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– the Political Economy of Food Price Policy in Malawi
The paper examines the underlying political economy motivations of the government’s policy responses to food price increases in 2007/08 focusing particularly on maize as the main staple crop. The main government policy responses to the food price spikes in 2007/08 were price control, bans on...
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– The Limits of Foreign Aid on Malawi’s Democratic Consolidation
Since the era of one-party rule, Malawi’s relationship with the donor community has proved erratic and contentious. During the second term of Malawi’s current president, Bingu wa Mutharika, this trend has continued apace, with important implications for the consolidation of the country’s nascent...
Displaying 32 of 41 results