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Publications (27)
The Zambian government wants to reduce poverty by 20% by 2030. To make this happen, the government reformed their national cash transfer programmes. But what was the potential impact? In 2021, our MicroZAMOD team conducted an assessment—recommendations of which have been adopted at the highest level...
Across Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia, political candidates often attempt to buy the votes of the most socio-economically deprived communities. But new research from Prisca Jöst and Ellen Lust argues that social cohesion in these communities is instrumental in determining the levels of support for...
– What Zambia is doing right
Over half of Zambia’s population lived below the national poverty line in 2015. In rural areas, where 89% of households are engaged in agriculture, the poverty rate was even higher, at 77% of the population. The government runs several programmes of financial support for farmers. Some provide...
– Evidence from tax administrative and survey data in Zambia
Like most other countries, the government of Zambia introduced restrictions to control COVID-19, which considerably curtailed normal economic activity. A new WIDER and World Bank working paper, a multi-institutional collaboration of UNU-WIDER, the World Bank, the Zambia Revenue Authority and the...
Millions of Africans lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but state social security systems were of little help to people who lost their income.This is the conclusion of a study conducted by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, UNU...
– New perspectives on travelling for research
Working for an international organisation presents a host of challenges, given the vast nature of tasks that one must surmount in a fast paced and changing environment. It might be a roller coaster, but also satisfying by providing many worthwhile experiences. The latter was my sensation during my...
In summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and avoiding societies from becoming more unequal. Now we are releasing a cross-country comparative study that analyses the distributional effects of the...
From the book:
Mining for Change
– Growing the animal-feed-to-poultry regional value chain
In 2016 the South African poultry sector faced intense pressure from two sides in the form of much higher input costs and increased imports of low-priced chicken from the European Union and the USA. Poultry firms have called for increased protection against imports. Instead of taking a short-term...
– 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...
Blog
The UNU-WIDER project on extractives for development seeks to examine how poor and middle-income countries can best use their natural resource wealth to promote development. It is well understood that minerals, metals, oil or gas (collectively known as ‘extractives’) have for some years been...
Blog
– Challenging the conventional wisdom
It is widely accepted in recent work in economics and political science that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on the provision of public goods such as health and education. Indeed, the conventional wisdom holds that a negative relationship is so well-established empirically that research...
Displaying 16 of 27 results