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January-February 2020

Blog | From small beginnings, big impact
by Kunal Sen

2020 marks the 35th year of UNU-WIDER’s impact in the sphere of development economics. Over the years, the institute has influenced the discourse, contributed to better policy making, and through its partnerships with national governments, international organizations, and the United Nations, worked on solutions to pressing global problems such as famine, poverty, underdevelopment, economic instability, environmental decline, indebtedness, inequality, conflict, state fragility, and the underrepresentation of developing countries in global decision-making. This year, while the institute continues this important work, it will also take a moment to look back at 35 years of pioneering accomplishments, big and small.

Blog | Informing policy for a brighter future in Cameroon – Rose’s Summer School experience

by Eugenie Rose Fontep

In developing countries in general, and Cameroon in particular, young people struggle to get the quality of education needed for upward social mobility. I started studying intergenerational mobility in ...

Blog | Building skills to influence policy at home and abroad – learning and growing with UNU-WIDER

by Pouirkèta Rita Nikiema

UNU-WIDER has featured prominently in my research career to date. It began during my PhD when I visited the Helsinki office as a Visiting PhD Fellow to spend the spring working on my thesis with two ...

Blog | Book review of Resurgent Asia: Diversity in Development – completing a trilogy on Asia’s transformation

by Arkebe Oqubay

The book emphasizes two important messages: that there is no prescribed path or magic wand, or even an ‘Asian model’; and that latecomers travelling along their own paths have the opportunity ...

News

Women and Girls in Science 2020 campaign

11 February 2020

On 11 February the world celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. UNU-WIDER, along with other institutes across United Nations University, are taking this day of celebration a step further and will continue to celebrate women in science over the coming weeks via a social media campaign. We will share ...

UNU-WIDER releases new version of the World Income Inequality Database

19 December 2019

The WIID has long been used for research on global inequality, to analyse inequality trends across countries and to study the relationships between inequality and, for example, economic growth, foreign direct investment, real exchange rates, institutional ...

Publications

Book | Mining for Change – Natural Resources and Industry in Africa

edited by John Page and Finn Tarp

Open access | For a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery and exploitation of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. Countries dependent ...

Book | Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Vietnam

edited by John Rand and Finn Tarp

Open access | This edited volume provides an in-depth evaluation of the development of private sector formal and informal manufacturing SMEs in Vietnam over the past decade, combining a unique primary data source with the best panel data and analytical tools ...

Journal Article | Educational Opportunities in Indonesia – Are Factors Outside Individual Responsibility Persistent Over Time?

by Rajius Idzalika and Maria C. Lo Bue

Open access | In this paper, we define individual indices of the burden of circumstances, which measure the effect that the accumulation of factors outside individual control, has on individual educational ....

Journal Article | Are less developed countries more exposed to multinational tax avoidance?

by Niels Johannesen, Thomas Torslov and Ludvig Wier

On early view | This paper uses a global dataset with information about 210,000 corporations in 142 countries to investigate whether tax avoidance by multinational firms is more prevalent in ....

Journal Article | Corporate social responsibility in a competitive business environment

by Carol Newman, John Rand, Finn Tarp and Neda Trifković

Open access | Using a representative sample of more than 5,000 Vietnamese enterprises, we explore the firm-level productivity effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The data enables us to ...

Journal Article | Was Kuznets Right? – New Evidence on the Relationship between Structural Transformation and Inequality

by Çinar Baymul and Kunal Sen

Open access | We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for ...

Policy Brief | The politics of social protection in Eastern and Southern Africa – Actors, institutions and dynamics

by Sam Hickey, Tom Lavers, Miguel Niño-Zarazúa and Jeremy Seekings

The questions of whether aid has impact and is effective have been the subject of considerable attention. This thematic issue brings together nine studies that speak to the diverse ways in which aid affects development outcomes including, but not limited to, ...

WIDER Working papers

Working Paper

Social mobility in China – a case study of a quantitative sociological approach to social mobility research in the Global South

Working Paper

Social mobility and inequality between groups

Journal Article

Linked-in by FDI – the role of firm-level relationships for knowledge transfers in Africa and Asia

Working Paper

Income mobility in the developing world – recent approaches and evidence

Journal Article

Improving maternal health care in a post-conflict setting – Evidence from Chittagon Hill tracts of Bangladesh

Working paper

Are routine jobs moving south? – evidence from changes in the occupational structure of employment in the USA and Mexico

Events

Conference | Global partnerships for sustainable development

26-27 June 2020

The 2020 WIDER Development Conference in Helsinki, Finland, aims to take stock of global progress towards achieving the SDG 17 ‘Global Partnerships for the Goals,’ share knowledge on success stories and good practices, identify main challenges, and suggest ways ...

Seminar | Jeffrey Hammer on one hundred homes – a visual survey of wealth and poverty in India

12 March 2020

In 2018, a multi-disciplinary team from India and four other countries collected expenditure data, photographs, 360-degree media, and documentary footage of One Hundred Indian Homes, representing the entire range of per-capita consumption levels found across ...

Lecture | Deepak Nayyar lecture at LSE on Resurgent Asia

4 March 2020

The lecture will analyse the phenomenal transformation of Asia, which would have been difficult to imagine, let alone predict, fifty years ago. In doing so, it provides an analytical narrative of this remarkable story of economic development, situated in the wider context ...

Project workshop | Findings from recent research based on Ugandan administrative tax data

4 March 2020

Recent research results from analyses based on Ugandan administrative tax data will be presented to policy makers, government officials, and the interested research community in Kampala.

Opportunities

Vacancy | Research Associate

UNU-WIDER is looking for three outstanding individuals with strong commitment and potential to support 'Enterprises, livelihoods, and compliance' and 'SOUTHMOD – simulating tax and benefit policies for development' projects. Closing date: 11 March 2020, 23:59 UTC+2

Vacancy | Research Associate

UNU-WIDER is looking for one outstanding individual with strong commitment and potential to support one or both of the following two projects: (1) Institutions project (2) Domestic financing project. Closing date: 9 March 2020, 23:59 UTC+2.

Call for papers | Conference: Evidence to enhance inclusive growth

The annual conference of the Inclusive growth in Mozambique – scaling up research and capacity programme will be held on 5-6 November 2020 in Maputo, Mozambique. The deadline for submissions is 15 April 2020 (23:59 UTC+3).

Request for research proposals | Migration and South Africa

UNU-WIDER, together with its partners, now invites research proposals related to migration for the Southern Africa Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) programme. Deadline for submissions is 6 April 2020 23:59 UTC+3.

From the network | Call for papers for the Nordic Conference in Development Economics

The 19th NCDE conference, held in Bergen Norway on 16-17 June 2020, is organised by Chr. Michelsen Institute, the Department of Economics at the University of Bergen, and FAIR - Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality - NHH. The conference is organized on behalf of the Nordic Network in Development Economics. Deadline for submissions is 13 April 2020.

From the network | Call for papers for the Conference on Education and Decent Work for Youth

The aim of the Education and Decent Work for Youth (LELAM2020) conference is to provide a platform for leading scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to reflect on and discuss the drivers of high quality education and training, as well as improved working conditions, for youth in developing countries. Held during 4-5 June 2020, in ETH Zürich, the conference will feature three keynote speakers, academic parallel sessions, project presentations from practice, and multiple policy plenary sessions. Deadline for submissions is 1 March 2020.

From the network | Call for abstracts on the Conference on Concurrent Crisis and Sustainable Futures: global extrativism and alternatives

At the EXALT Initiative 2020 conference we seek to draw together diverse critical analyses of the phenomena of global extractivisms and the myriad alternatives being actively pursued in both theory and practice. The conference is held on 20-23 October 2020 in Helsinki, Finland. Deadline for submissions is 6 April 2020.

	UNU-WIDER
	Finland