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Blog
– The Earth Trembles in Haiti
Evans Jadotte On Tuesday January 12 2010, a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake, off the coast of Haiti destroyed its capital Port-au-Prince. It also razed the cities of Léogane, Petit-Goâve, Grand-Goâve, Jacmel, and Les Cayes. It came as a terrible unexpected shock to one of the poorest countries in the...
Blog
– Evidence from a randomized neighbourhood relocation policy in India
Caste in India plays an instrumental role in determining access to education, jobs, public spaces, and social networks. For instance, despite state governments providing incentives to encourage intercaste marriage, only 4.9% of marriages in India take place outside caste . While numerous affirmative...
During the past week, I participated in two international conferences. The first was the WIDER Development Conference in Helsinki: Think development - Think WIDER. The second was in Kigali: Transforming Rwanda: Industrial Policy for the Next Decade, which was convened by Rwanda’s Minister of Trade...
Blog
– The annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb
About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15-point action plan that aimed to curb practices that shielded a large chunk of corporate profits from tax authorities.But, according to our estimates...
On the third day of the annual UNU-WIDER Conference on 8 September, RISE presented findings from three studies on COVID-19's impact on education systems. These studies underline the urgent need to remediate learning losses, but they also illustrate how systems can ‘build back better’. RISE’s panel...
– Changing IMF orthodoxy (1985-95)
UNU-WIDER was among the first to challenge IMF orthodoxy on macroeconomic stabilization. The 1985-87 project ‘Stabilization and adjustment policies and programmes’ put out a set of work that stands today as one of the first critical and credible collections calling for reconsideration of IMF...
– Bringing inequality to the fore (1998-2020)
UNU-WIDER released the world’s first estimates of the global wealth distribution in 2007 – one result of a 2004–05 project, ‘Personal Assets from a Global Perspective’. The project’s work inspired Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report, which remains the most important report on wealth inequality in...
– Building just societies
To celebrate its 35th birthday, UNU-WIDER has looked back at some of its greatest achievements. As the year closes, Armida Alisjahbana, Kunal Sen, Andy Sumner, and Arief Yusuf highlight the continued impact of UNU-WIDER’s flagship work and the future of knowledge about building more just societies...
Blog
– Working together to achieve the SDGs
'It was great to have enough time to discuss each paper. I received useful and frank feedback. The topics are relevant for everyone. I noticed a healthy gender balance.' These were some of the comments expressed at our research review workshop in Dar es Salaam in February, hosted by our partner...
– Why that’s a problem and how to fix it
Less than 10% of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa save for old age, the lowest rate for any region in the world. That implies most of the breadwinners today won’t be able to afford basic items after retirement. A pension plan is meant to commit employers to make regular savings so that employees...
Among the many things said about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the description by the President of the UN General Assembly’s 70th session, Mogens Lykketoft, that the SDGs represented ‘an unprecedented statistical challenge’. In addition to the 17 goals, there are 169 targets and 232...
– The last 25 years
Ever since the British Industrial Revolution, energy has been a key factor of production. Recent history has proved no exception. The pattern of primary commercial energy consumption since 1965 is presented in Figure 1. What is also clear is that, since the start of this century, energy consumption...
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
– The Impact of Latin America's Infrastructure Reforms
by Cecilia Ugaz and Catherine Waddams Price How have consumers fared from the sale and introduction of competition to the traditional ‘public utilities’ (electricity, water, telecommunications, etc) in Latin America? Have some consumer groups benefited more than others from increased coverage and...
In the late 1950s, the United Nations System of National Accounts was set up to promote the collection of internationally comparable data on productive activity in different countries. The aim was to provide the basis for policy-making, including estimating the gross national product (GNP), the main...
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...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the disruption, by sanctions or war, of two of the world’s largest grain exporters. This means 2022 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the global food system. Yet there were concerns that this system was creaking at the seams as far back as 2007. At...
– 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...
It’s early July and I’m back in Maputo, Mozambique, looking over the calm sea at the boats that fish the waters for the seafood that makes visiting this part of Africa such a treat. The sunset here is a delicate combination of pale turquoise, light grey, and warm pink. Coming from the Finnish summer...
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...
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...
Blog
24 June 2013 Minister Gunilla Carlson Like every political agenda, the post-2015 agenda must be firmly based in a reality check. The current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have served the world well, and managed to focus the global development agenda on a specific set of challenges. But the...
Weak legal systems, complex regulations, dishonoured agreements, corruption, general disorder - these are just some of the challenges that development agencies working in fragile and conflict-affected states face. What kind of interventions can encourage economic growth in this environment? While...
Blog
The length of maternity leave has direct impacts on critical gender equality outcomes such as women’s employment and lifetime earnings. However, there are different perspectives on the most appropriate duration of maternity leave and how it may impact these outcomes. There is no definite consensus...
– 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
pdf
– 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...
– Takeaways from the first UNU-WIDER Summer School
As an applied economist working as a lecturer and researcher in Nigeria, opportunities to learn and exchange ideas with peers can be few and far between. Researchers in the Global South, like myself, are often quite isolated with limited opportunities to engage with researchers at the top of our...
At the UNU-WIDER offices here in Helsinki, Finland, the summer holidays are almost upon us. Looking at the list of new UNU-WIDER publications, it is easy to see how much we accomplished this past year, despite the many constraints faced. By my latest count, we have 25 new working papers and 12 new...
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...
– 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...
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