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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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 issue contains seven articles addressing the major changes underway in the integration of economies in southern Africa. This special issue is based on the UNU-WIDER project 'Regional growth and development in Southern Africa'. This project aims to develop, in conjunction with important research...
This journal presents a synopsis of the contextual conditions, factors and challenges under which the recent evolution of tax systems has taken place, as an introduction to this United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research Special Issue. The journal, as the studies in...
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 focuses on a collaborative effort between the National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) to employ administrative record data from SARS for economic policy analysis. It contains six research articles plus a synthesis article designed to draw out potential...
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.
– Measurement, trends, impacts and policies
Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty—often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should...
Much criticism of aid rests on no evidence at all, on out-of-date studies (many of which are methodologically weak) or on a misunderstanding of causation and country context. Many critics correlate weak or negative growth with aid flows, without much (if any) attention to the direction of causation...
The United Nations sustainable development goal (SDG) 3 seeks “to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all and at all ages”. To build healthcare systems that were able to progress towards the millennium development goals, many countries had to extend delivery systems to increase coverage...
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 on aid and institutions discusses how they constitute an important element of the global response to interlinked global developmental and environmental challenges. As such, these institutions are now being drawn into new arenas beyond the traditional focus on improving the...
– Evidence on Exporting and Firm-Level Performance
This Journal Special Issue is based on the UNU-WIDER project Learning to compete (L2C) – accelerating industrial development in Africa. Learning to Compete seeks to answer a seemingly simple but puzzling question: why is there so little industry in Africa? Industry—including modern services and agro...
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...
The studies of this Special Issue aim to address the general question of how aid can better support the collective actions that seek to improve education systems in developing countries. Overall, they provide an analysis of key policy strategies that can improve the functioning of education systems...
This special section contains a series of five articles focused on energy and climate change in sub-Saharan Africa. It is well known that energy demand in sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly and that many countries struggle to meet demand. Failure to meet energy demand reduces living standards...
The UNU-WIDER Special Issue aims to address collectively the following questions: (1) What are the principles and facts that have underpinned the evolution of bilateral and multilateral social sector aid over the past 25 years? In particular, how pro-poor has aid to the social sectors been? (2) What...
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...
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.
– Selected studies on Sub-Sahara Africa and South-East Asia
Under the very large majority of combinations of global mitigation efforts (emissions scenarios) and climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, a considerable amount of warming appears to be built into the global climate system. For developing countries, significant questions exist...
Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas can be a core component of peacebuilding, providing support for the restoration of government functions, delivery of basic services, the rule of law and economic revitalization. Despite a wealth of research, however, significant...
– The Challenge of Chronic Weakness
This special issue has its origins in work conducted under the Governance and Fragility theme of UNU-WIDER’s ReCom - Research and Communication on Foreign Aid programme (2011–13), and particularly the work on ‘Aid and Institution-building in Fragile States: Findings from Comparative Cases’. This set...
This special issue introduction provides a historical perspective in order to contextualize the political economy of Africa’s emergent middle class. In doing so, three overarching research questions are discussed to better understand the middle class’ transformative potential. First, who constitute...
In recent years, experimental methods have been both highly celebrated, and roundly criticized, as a means of addressing core questions in the social sciences. They have received particular attention in the analysis of development interventions. The studies in this special issue push beyond...
The articles in this special issue set forth a set of technical contributions that will improve the understanding of the impacts of climate change in developing countries. They are drawn from the Development Under Climate Change (DUCC) project carried out by UNU-WIDER of which the countries of the...
This is an introduction to the UNU-WIDER special issue of World Development on aid policy and the macroeconomic management of aid. We provide an overview of the 10 studies, grouping them under three sub-themes: the aid–growth relationship; the supply-side of aid (including its level, volatility, and...
– 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...
This special issue of the Journal of Development Economics originates from a UNU-WIDER research project on land inequality and decentralized governance in LDCs. The research began in late 2010 with Dilip Mookherjee and Pranab Bardhan jointly directing the project; one of the first project activities...
For more than two decades, addressing constraints to better governance in developing countries has been a priority issue for the international donor community. Recent changes to aid modalities have further prioritized the need for improving governance in a manner that ensures local ownership and...
This special issue comprises UNU-WIDER research focusing on key governance challenges related to addressing gaps in urban service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa. First, due to decentralisation policies in much of Africa, the provision of services is often transferred to sub-national authorities. But...
Position Paper
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This position paper on Aid, Growth, and Employment was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-to-date overview and guide to a complex issue in the development field: the relation between aid and growth. Moreover, the position paper addresses the intricate linkages between aid and employment and tries—in a forward looking perspective—to identify existing challenges for future action in development practice and research with a view to increasing aid efficiency.The position paper relates to the...
Position Paper
pdf
This position paper on Aid and Gender Equality was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-to-date overview and guide to a complex issue in the development field: the relation between aid and gender equality. Moreover, the position paper addresses the intricate linkages between aid and gender equality and tries—in a forward looking perspective—to identify existing challenges for future action in development practice and research with a view to increasing aid efficiency. The position paper relates...
This Special Issue brings together papers from UNU-WIDER Conference on Poverty and Behavioural Economics that were accepted after the peer review process of the journal. The eight papers in this Special Issue all share the objective of exploring the consequences for the analysis of poverty and...
Position Paper
pdf
This position paper on Aid, Governance, and Fragility was prepared by UNUWIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide an up-to-date overview and guide to two topics of central importance to international development: governance and fragility. This discussion is grounded in the central questions of the ReCom programme: What works, what could work, what is scalable, and what is transferable in foreign aid? We also consider the related question, what does not work?Governance and fragility are sometimes treated as entirely separate...
Displaying 48 of 99 results