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Publications (145)
The share of the least developed countries (LDCs) in global foreign investments is less than one percent. But positive developments have taken place—for example, the number of startup companies has increased. This information emerged at a forum held by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and...
Sustainable economic development hinges on the ability of firms and households to maintain growth and wellbeing. How have Tanzania’s firms and households performed in recent decades, and what policies can improve their resilience against future shocks?Firms that export are better able to sustain...
– The Institutional Diagnostic Project
Few countries have experienced as many political and economic changes as Mozambique. A vast and diverse country, it faced a particularly difficult start after a long period of colonial dominance followed by a deadly war that formally ended only in 1992. However, despite impressive growth after multi...
It is arguable that the most important event in the world economy in recent decades has been the rise of China, from being on a par with sub-Sahara Africa at the start of economic reform to being an economic superpower today. That rise remains under-researched. Moreover, the great structural changes...
Blog
Launched in 2015 and completed in 2022, the Institutional Diagnostic Project aimed at identifying institutional factors that affect development, reforms that may help address existing institutional constraints, and factors that can preclude or enable these reforms.Using the motto ‘institutions...
– The stumbling block to resilient growth and prosperity
When the question of creating good jobs and decent work in Africa arises, policymakers and development partners often focus on formalization. For decades, the discourse around informality has focused on how to transition informal workers to formal jobs. We have been considering formal and informal...
– Patterns, Determinants, Consequences
One of the key features of modern economic growth is the process of structural transformation, which is the movement of workers from agriculture to manufacturing and services. In this study, the author identifies different routes to structural transformation that we see in the developing world. They...
– The Changing Nature of Work and Inequality
Developed countries have experienced a polarization in earnings and in employment, namely stronger growth in the earnings and jobs for the most and least skilled workers at the expense of those in the middle. This pattern has been attributed to differences in tasks—whether a given job is routine and...
Structural transformation involves the movement of workers from low-productivity sectors to high-productivity sectors. It has historically been associated with a shift from agrarian economies to more industrial economies based around urban areas, as seen in many Western nations as well as the...
Simon Kuznets’ pipe dream was to have economic inequality data that rarely existed when he was writing. What are the pipe dreams of today’s development economists? How about a rigorous development economics book, or set of books, you could read in a spare hour or two? A book that provides an...
Blog
According to the World Bank, Indonesia has reached the upper-middle income status in 2019 after spending almost two decades in the lower-middle income country group. Despite the setback of COVID-19 the Indonesian government aspires to become a ‘developed’ country by 2045, when the country will...
– Overcoming the developer’s dilemma
There are multiple pathways of structural transformation and different inequality dynamics of each. Rising inequality is not inevitable — policies make a difference. Broad-based economic development requires public policies to address any upward pressure on inequality. A different policy agenda for...
Tanzania is, together with Kenya and Uganda, one of the founding members states of the East African Community (EAC), a regional intergovernmental organization which nowadays consists of six partner states in the region. Since the revival of the new EAC in 2000, EAC Customs Union (EAC-CU) in 2005...
Blog
– A curse or a blessing?
Much has been written on India as an outlier in Global Value Chains (GVC). Despite being one of the largest and fastest-growing markets located in direct proximity to ‘Factory Asia’ (Baldwin, 2008), India is documented to have low participation in global networks, especially amongst South Asian...
– Three lessons to inform next steps
At the start of the last decade, Mozambique’s prospects looked stellar. Following from the early 1990s, when peace finally arrived after a devastating and protracted armed conflict, this vast country in Southern Africa could look back proudly on a sustained period of rapid growth and poverty...
Blog
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy, with world output contracting at 3.5% in 2020, and no recovery likely before the fourth quarter of 2021. Similar to other developing regions, sub-Saharan Africa recorded a 2.6% decline, following strong growth of 3.2% in 2019...
Displaying 16 of 145 results