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Publications (148)
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...
Blog
Robert J. Strom Interest in the study of entrepreneurship has flourished among scholars in recent years. This research has brought to light, among other things, the important role of entrepreneurship and innovation in economic growth. We know that innovative entrepreneurs—those who bring new...
Blog
– Institutions and the Industrial Revolution
by Patrick Karl O’Brien ‘Good’ institutions have become a core ingredient of most modern day explanations of economic growth and development. The recently published WIDER book on Institutional Change and Economic Development (see the previous Angle article by Ha-Joon Chang) emphasizes that what is...
Blog
by Jose Antonio Ocampo With economic activity falling by close to 1 percent in 2002, Latin America will complete a lost half-decade in terms of economic growth. Per capita output for this year will be 2 percent less than in 1997. Although the crisis in Argentina explains part of this result, slow...
– Regional integration in southern Africa through supermarkets
Walk into any supermarket and you will find a mix of products to stock the kitchen. It’s easy to assume that many of the goods on offer are sourced locally and from nearby countries. In the region of southern Africa, however, imported goods are often shipped from another continent instead of...
– Three key questions for understanding shifts in global poverty
In 2010 and the following years, there was attention to the fact that much of global poverty had shifted to middle-income countries (for example here, here, and here). The world’s poor hadn’t moved of course, but the countries that are home to large numbers of poor people had got better off on...
– Bad Luck or Bad Policy?
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not exactly the right word. Africa’s experience with industrialization over the past quarter century has actually been disappointing. In 2010, sub-Saharan...
– 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...
Blog
To Stockholm, for Sida’s Development Talks on the theme ‘Africa rising? Poverty and growth in sub-Saharan Africa’. Finn Tarp and Andy McKay spoke about their new UNU-WIDER book, co-edited with Channing Arndt, entitled Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa—the book is on full open access...
Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country, has recorded high growth in recent years. Indeed, real GDP growth rate was 6.31 in 2014 (compared to the regional average of 4.35). Life expectancy has also increased (by 6.9 years since 1980) and so has mean years of schooling...
– 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...
Blog
22 March 2013 The share of aid to social sectors has grown over the past 20 years. Evidence shows clear links between support to these sectors and poverty reduction, economic growth, and human development. But what works, and why? And how can donors support efforts to make aid even more efficient...
Blog
11 September 2014 by Roger Williamson In this interview Finn Tarp, Director of UNU-WIDER, discusses the evidence uncovered in the aid and growth and other themes of the ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid programme, coordinated by UNU-WIDER 2011-13. Cross-country analysis Tarp presents...
Blog
Tony Addison 'Birds of a feather flock together', the old saying goes. So too do investors. Today, those investment birds are a depressed lot. The summer talk is of a 'double dip recession', 'Euro zone collapse', and the USA and Europe 'turning into Japan'—years of economic stagnation. It's enough...
– Completing a trilogy on Asia’s transformation
Deepak Nayyar — economist, thinker, leading scholar — has written yet another splendid book. Resurgent Asia: Diversity in Development, together with the excellent Asian Transformations: An Inquiry into the Development of Nations (2019), recently edited by Nayyar, and an earlier path-breaking book...
Blog
– Lessons for Africa – An Interview with Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann
24 January 2014 In this interview Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann give an introduction to their research project at the Brooks World Poverty Institute on the relevance of the Brazilian development model for Africa. Brazil and other Latin American countries emerged from the period of structural...
Displaying 16 of 148 results