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Publications (420)
Research Brief
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– Income inequality in former British African colonies
The presence of European colonial powers in Africa has left a long-lasting legacy that has severely impacted their development trajectories. But what are the lingering effects of colonization on economic performance, in particular with regard to inequality? While clear information on many economic...
– Socioeconomic class and poverty in South Africa
South Africa is often cited as the most unequal economy in the world. Its experience of having to overcome both colonialism and apartheid makes it unique from the vantage of studies on socioeconomic class, economic mobility, and poverty — with household characteristics like race, gender, and...
Research Brief
In 2008 Doucouliagos and Paldam published a paper, hereafter known as DP08, based on a meta-analytic approach to the aid-growth question. Working with a database including 68 studies on the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth they arrived at a pessimistic result. This is in line...
– Addressing the lack of data and observing the structure of the economy
With the recent democratic elections, Myanmar has entered a new development phase. To support this process there is amongst others a need for sound economic policies that have an economy-wide perspective. To enable such policies, appropriate analytical methods and the relevant underlying data, must...
Policy Brief
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– Levar aos Pobres os Benefícios da Paz
Este resumo na área das políticas apresenta os resultados de um projecto do UNU/WIDER sobre a guerra e a reconstrução em África da autoria de Tony Addison, que se encontra actualmente publicado sob o nome de From Conflict to Recovery in Africa. Tal como este estudo deixa bem claro, a paz é...
– Experience over the last fifty years
Asia has achieved remarkable economic growth and seen hundreds of millions of citizens rise out of poverty since the mid-1960s. Constructing and analysing the factors behind continent’s poverty and inequality over the last fifty years helps gain important insights for further reducing global poverty...
Research Brief
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Microfinance evaluations reveal a positive impact on per capita income, non-land asset value and poverty incidence. Across countries and methodologies, microfinance is most likely to have a short-term positive effect; regionally, the most positive impacts are seen in Africa. Women tend to benefit...
Policy Brief
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The objective of this research and policy brief is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of the political economy. The roads of access to land which are explored are...
Policy Brief
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– Strategies and Lessons from the Developing World
What can the less well-off developing countries learn from the ’successes’ of other developing countries? This Policy Brief highlights successful development strategies and lessons from in-depth case studies of select countries from the developing world. The coverage includes East Asia and the...
– Three challenges limiting the potential for inclusive growth
Historically, the African continent has been largely dismissed as a case of regional economic delinquency, with the levels of growth necessary to reduce poverty and inequality deemed to be consistently unattainable. In the last decade, however, significantly higher levels of economic growth have...
Policy Brief
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– Making Peace Work for the Poor
This policy brief summarizes the results of a UNU/WIDER project on war and reconstruction in Africa directed by Tony Addison, which is now published as From Conflict to Recovery in Africa. As this study makes clear, peace is often elusive and economic policy can play a major role in supporting the...
Research Brief
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– The Impact of Development Aid and Democracy Assistance
Development aid was effective in promoting democratic transitions during the 1990s in African countries beset by economic crisis domestic discontent, and a high dependency on aid. Development aid also influenced democratic transition indirectly through conditionalities that required unpopular...
– Beyond the Tipping Point
In 2007 the number of urban inhabitants will surpass rural dwellers as a percentage of the total world population. By 2030 the proportion of people living in cities globally is expected to reach 61%, with almost 80% of urban dwellers living in less developed countries. For the first time in history...
The real value of official aid flows fell for much of the 1990s, and private capital flows to low-income countries remain mostly limited. The decline in aid flows may endanger the development process, since they finance much of the development budget in many poor countries. However, while aid in...
Research Brief
In 1959 the Netherlands discovered vast natural gas resources in the North Sea. This discovery led to a rapid increase in the country’s national wealth. However in the 1960s the Netherlands experienced an economic crisis. The natural gas reserves were one of the causes of this crisis, as the Dutch...
Research Brief
– The Case of Sierra Leone
Phillip Michael Kargbo's UNU-WIDER working paper, 'Impact of Foreign Aid on Economic Growth in Sierra Leone: Empirical Analysis' examines the impact of foreign aid on growth in Sierra Leone using a variety of econometric approaches. The paper finds that in the period 1970-2007 aid has a significant...
This Special Issue brings together five articles that tackle the questions of how and where foreign aid donors might usefully support a more inclusive or job-friendly pattern of economic growth in the African region. Arguably, support to growth-enhancing structural change and employment creation is...
– Creating good jobs in Africa
The prevailing narrative about growth and development in Africa has shifted dramatically. During the1980s and 90s pessimism abounded. Today, a more optimistic narrative of development in the region largely reigns. However challenges still remain. In particular structural transformation has been slow...
Research Brief
– What Does the Evidence Say?
Donors are concerned about how their aid is used, especially how it affects public spending. For low-income countries that receive significant amounts of aid relative to GDP, most of the aid spent in the country is given to the government either directly, or by financing services that would...
– Findings from Comparative Cases
Why and how some states transition successfully from fragile to more robust—and some do not—are both topical and age-old questions. This volume of The ANNALS addresses these questions with particular attention to the role of foreign aid, offering new traction on theory development on state-building...
Research Brief
It is widely recognized that entrepreneurship is of critical importance to industrial development. Despite this importance we know little about the skills of business owners and managers in developing countries. In the WIDER Working Paper ‘The Role of Training in Fostering Cluster-Based Micro and...
Research Brief
– A New Agenda
It is commonly acknowledged that developing economies are characterized by large differences in output per worker across sectors. For such economies the shift of resources from low productivity to high productivity is the key potential driver of economic growth. Nearly all developing countries that...
– Growth and beyond
The questions of whether aid has impact and is effective have been the subject of considerable attention. This thematic issue brings together nine studies that speak to the diverse ways in which aid affects development outcomes including, but not limited to, growth. It takes stock of what we know...
Research Brief
The question of whether aid is effective in promoting growth is a controversial one. Views range from those who are highly skeptical that aid has any effect on growth at all, to those who believe that aid can play a significant role in promoting economic development. In the WIDER Working Paper 'The...
Research Brief
– Exploring the Fatal Flaw
Aid to Haiti has not been effective due to failure of the country’s political and economic elites to participate and assist in the development process. US foreign policy has in some cases reinforced the tendency for elites to personally profit from aid initiatives. Haiti has received more than US$20...
This special issue of the Journal of International Development comprises a set of papers on the theme of aid and gender equality. While the topic of aid effectiveness has been examined in this journal and elsewhere, the focus on how well development assistance to countries and non-governmental...
– How to support effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions for sustainable development?
Aiding government effectiveness in developing countries has been a priority issue for the international donor community since the 1990s. With the Paris Declaration in 1994, donors further committed to aiding government effectiveness in a manner consistent with local ownership and harmonization with...
Research Brief
In the WIDER Working Paper ‘Aid and Investment in Statistics for Africa’ Jeffery I. Round discusses how the effectiveness of aid aimed at improving statistical capacity in Africa can be assessed. He begins by describing the reasons behind the increasing demand for data, and the institutions involved...
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 &...
Research Brief
Donor political interests have heavily influenced aid flows to North Africa in the past. This has reduced the effectiveness of aid which, with the exception of Tunisia, has not been associated with sustained economic growth. The Arab Spring provides an opportunity to reappraise aid flows to the...
– The latest evidence on the effectiveness of ODA
The death of aid has often been declared, and private capital flows as well as earnings from natural resources now far exceed official development assistance (ODA) in aggregate. However, the recent and sharp downturn in resource earnings, the ability of ODA to fund public goods that private capital...
Displaying 32 of 420 results