Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (107)
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.
Political clientelism — which reflects strategic, discretionary, and targeted exchange of private goods and services for political support to the incumbent — has characterised distributive politics in the Global South for decades. The conditional nature of exchange between political parties and...
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.
– Routes to social and economic empowerment
In recent decades, trends in female labour force participation rates have been very heterogeneous across developing countries, despite widespread economic growth, fertility decline, and narrowing gender gaps in education.However, globally, gender gaps in wages and labour force participation are...
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 special issue presents new research on the state and its links to economic and social development. The special issue focuses on the processes of institutional transformation of the state, looking at how fiscal states arise in the developing world.The resulting set of articles presents a variety...
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.
The special issue contributes significantly to critical issues related to the nature of informal employment and its determinants, how informal firms can grow their business and productivity, and the effects of labour market regulations and social insurance policies on informality.
Background Note
pdf
Introduction Only recently has the importance and potential of behavioural sciences been recognized as a critical tool to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This long-awaited recognition comes from the highest levels of the United Nations, with the Secretary-General recently issuing a...
Background Note
pdf
IntroductionThe South African youth wage subsidy started in 2014 to increase employment and create jobs for low-wage youth. The subsidy was temporarily raised in value and expanded to reach more workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the lockdown period, the government used the subsidy to curb...
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.
– Vietnamese and Afghan migrants in Canada, Germany, the UK, and the US
Migration is an inherent feature of human history. A rich literature considers the experiences of global migrants across diverse environments. This special issue explores such experiences with a focus on inequality between migrants and host populations in countries of settlement. It asks: why are...
Background Note
pdf
– The South African experience
Introduction: data for development Globally, one of the key factors associated with increasing use of data to inform policy-making has been the increased availability of new administrative data sources. In 2014, the National Treasury of South Africa (NT) pioneered the development of new tax...
Background Note
pdf
IntroductionThe literature on the concept, measurement, causes, and correlates of sub-national institutional governance is not new. From the seminal work of Putnam et al. (1993) to recent attempts by Iddawela et al. (2021), several authors have explored untapped spaces that contribute to our...
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 special section presents the main findings about long-run trends in inequality in China and its driving factors as they emerge from a country case study carried out under a UNU-WIDER-supported project. Special focus in the umbrella project were on three issues: (i) the role of earnings...
Background Note
pdf
– Insights from Kenya
In this background note, we examine how different firms and sectors rebound or prevail in crises. We draw on insights from the performance (upgrading potential) of Kenyan horticulture, tea, and leather export firms during two recent, but very different, shocks to the Kenyan economy. The first is the...
Background Note
pdf
– Insights from the sub-Saharan African experience
Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic poses important risks for people’s health and economic wellbeing. While the full socio-economic consequences remain uncertain, the pandemic’s impact on the labour market has become an issue of global concern. Especially low-income earners with jobs in precarious...
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.
– Learning from Vietnam
Agriculture is the backbone of most developing economies and structural transformation an important vehicle for economic development in low-income agrarian contexts. This special issue brings together a set of high-quality academic studies to answer key research questions of importance to...
Background Note
pdf
– Decoupling production of the vaccine from its development
Development and production of a COVID-19 vaccine There is a high risk that the intellectual property (IP) rights of a COVID-19 vaccine will effectively block people in many poorer countries from accessing it. To avoid this situation, I propose that a practical solution would be to separate out the...
Background Note
pdf
– The case of Ghana
The first two cases of COVID-19 were reported in Ghana on 12 March 2020 by the health ministry. As a first response, on 15 March all public gatherings were banned, all schools and universities were closed, and on 23 March all of the county's borders were closed. In the interest of public safety, a...
Background Note
pdf
– Priorities and trade-offs
In this note, I will refer to current efforts to harness artificial intelligence (AI) in the push back against COVID-19, note its promises, limitations, potential pitfalls, and identify priorities for developing countries. Artificial Intelligence is the use of algorithms, data, and statistics to...
Background Note
pdf
– The case of Kenya
The COVID-19 pandemic has now spread to over 180 countries, including several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.1 Kenya reported its first COVID-19 case on 13 March 2020. By 31 March the number of confirmed cases had risen to 59, with over 70 per cent of infections in Nairobi. As at 22 April 2020, the...
Background Note
pdf
– The case of South Africa
What has the government of South Africa done with respect to COVID-19 measures of mitigation and suppression? The first COVID-19 positive case was confirmed on 5 March 2020. Just ten days later, South Africa had 61 positive cases and President Ramaphosa addressed the country, calling for measures to...
Background Note
pdf
– The case of India
Several countries have enacted lockdown measures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect their health systems and reduce the number of mortalities. One of the most extreme national lockdown measures has been taken by the government of India, with over 1.3 billion persons put under a strictly...
Over the past three decades, there has been notable progress on certain key dimensions of gender equality. Almost universally the gender gap in education has been narrowed and commitments to secure equal access to employment have advanced. However, the rate of progress towards gender equality in...
This special issue presents an analysis of the recent evolution of social assistance in the developing world, looking at its complex typological configuration. It partly reflects the complex demographic and epidemiological transitions and rapid urbanization and economic convergence many developing...
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.
– Data, measurement, and trends
Inequality and social exclusion receive considerable contemporary policy attention. In the field of international development, inequality—both vertical (between individuals and households) and horizontal (between groups)—is a core concern in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Despite...
Tax, and public-sector matters more generally, is high on the agenda of international development. This is clearly reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved by the United Nations General Assembly in September of 2015. SDG17 addresses the need for improving domestic resource...
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 collection of studies considers the impact of migration in the Global South on those who do not migrate: children, partners, and families left behind; sending communities; and national economies. In so doing, it speaks to continuing research ad policy discussions on the 'migration-development...
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.
Building knowledge about migration governance and policy in the Global South is a priority for research and policy. The studies in this special section offer both new empirical insights and new frameworks for analysis, with key policy implications, that can enrich our discussion of these topics...
– Some lessons from Africa
This special issue comprises six papers analysing different dimensions of inequalities in African countries. Three papers deal with the trend in inequality in consumption in Mozambique, with multidimensional poverty in four sub‐Saharan countries, and with the relationship between living conditions...
The questions of whether aid has impact and is effective have been the subject of a considerable literature, including attention to the aggregate impact of aid on growth across countries (Arndt, Jones, & Tarp, 2010, 2015, 2016; Burnside & Dollar, 2000; Easterly, 2003; Hansen & Tarp, 2001; Jones &...
This journal special issue revisits questions surrounding biofuel futures in Southern Africa and explores the case for the establishment of a regional market. The analysis in this issue suggests that while benefits exist, the key challenges that have stifled production and consumption to date would...
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.
Social protection has attracted increasing interest in developing countries in recent decades and policies have been initiated in all developing regions. Cash transfer policies are already in place in many African countries, but their coverage is still limited, although it is expanding. Many of the...
The articles in the forthcoming special issue are already available online on full open access. The special issue will be officially published in March 2019, vol. 55, issue 3. Legal empowerment has become widely accepted in development policy circles as an approach to addressing poverty and...
The collection of articles in this symposium speaks to the issue of female autonomy and women's welfare within households, making use of rich data from a variety of developing countries including Brazil, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, India, Indonesia, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia.
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.
A considerable body of research suggests that horizontal inequality between ethnic groups has major socioeconomic implications, in particular for peace and economic development. Much of this work focuses on horizontal inequality as an independent causal variable, rather than an outcome of various...
Displaying 32 of 107 results