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Publications (30)
– 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...
– Five key issues and solutions
Taxation, and public sector matters more generally, are high on the agenda for the international development community. This is clearly reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG17 stipulates the need for improving domestic resource mobilization directly, and most of the other SDGs...
The first cases of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa were reported in March 2020, and the impact of the pandemic has since rippled through the world and Africa. In response to the crisis and similarly to many of its peers, Ghana has enacted a variety of containment measures to confront the pandemic...
In 2020, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused an economic crisis that disrupted the Ugandan labour market. How large were the associated income losses across different industries and population groups? To what extent did the general tax-benefit system mitigate the adverse effects of the...
Zambia’s economic growth has been flattening over the past decade. In 2020 economic prospects further worsened, following the onset of the pandemic, rising debt, and the Eurobond default. In this unprecedented scenario, there is the need to examine impacts on welfare and the mitigation role taxes...
Much of the research on the impact of fiscal policy shocks on macroeconomic outcomes (e.g., fiscal multipliers) uses reduced-form modelling approaches such as vector auto-regressions to obtain empirical results. In a recent study1, we used this approach to estimate fiscal multipliers for South...
Policy Brief
pdf
Growth, poverty reduction, and social peace are all undermined when public expenditure management and taxation are weak and when the fiscal deficit and public debt are not managed successfully. And large-scale aid and debt relief cannot work without a good fiscal system. The macroeconomic frameworks...
Policy Brief
pdf
A multidisciplinary research project organized by UNU-WIDER shows that ongoing destruction of the world's forests is greatly contributing to the greenhouse effect. Deforestation is often a consequence of market distortions that hide the real economic value of forests and result in the inefficient...
The design and implementation of effective aid policy requires a deeper understanding of the impact of aid and the overall environment in which development aid operates. This policy brief addresses four areas which are key to understanding how aid works: the relationship between aid and economic...
Policy Brief
pdf
Many of the world’s poorest countries can be described as 'fragile states' wherein governments cannot or will not provide an environment for households to reduce, mitigate, or cope with poverty and other risks to wellbeing. Many of these states are in conflict or just emerging from conflict. The UNU...
Large food price fluctuations—caused primarily by extreme weather events, market disruptions, investor behaviour and government policy—began in the world market in 2007 and presented serious challenges for governments, private traders, farmers and consumers. A collaborative project between Cornell...
There has been a revival of interest in the state’s role in economic development. Recent research argues that the most successful economies are those where effective states provide crucial public goods and services. The historical emergence of effective tax systems and the related processes by which...
– Income growth for the poor, but more for the rich
In the late 1970s, China embarked on a major programme of economic transition and reform. Since then, China’s economy has been transformed from a socialist planned economy to a predominately market economy characterized by a combination of state, private, and mixed forms of ownership. Over the past...
– On the rise again
Since 1989, inequality in Mexico has risen, declined, and risen again. The evolution of labour income inequality is at the core of this pattern. To reverse the current trend of rising inequality, access to secondary and tertiary education should continue to expand, minimum wages should be increased...
Policy design principles based on insights from psychology and economics could have a major impact on the effectiveness of policy implementation in areas such as under-saving, contract design, the measurement of vulnerability, and political support for redistributive policies both in the global...
Tanzania, similar to most sub-Saharan countries, reported its first COVID-19 cases in March 2020. While GDP estimates suggest that the economy was less hard hit than in other African countries, some sectors have nevertheless experienced negative growth. Even with contained GDP contractions in 2020...
Displaying 16 of 30 results