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September 2021

Conference | Achieving Sustainable Development in the Least Developed Countries – LDC Future Forum

5-7 October 2021 Helsinki, Finland and online

The next decade is make-or-break for the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed in a brutal fashion just how interconnected the world has become, and how no country will truly recover until every country has been supported through this crisis. To tackle the unprecedented confluence of the COVID-19, climate, and economic crises, innovative thinking and new solutions based in research are desperately needed.

Blogs

Staffan Lindberg’s keynote address is a wake-up call

by Timothy Shipp

In introducing Staffan Lindberg’s keynote at the WIDER Development Conference, UNU-WIDER Senior Research Fellow and political scientist Rachel Gisselquist says that the COVID-19 pandemic is linked to new restrictions on rights and freedoms at a time when experts have been warning about the decline of democracy for over a decade.

Wasted talent — How COVID-19’s effect on the poor could make all of society poorer

by Ruby Richardson

The opening keynote of the recent WIDER Development Conference, COVID-19 and development – effects and new realities for the Global South, was given by Oriana Bandiera, Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, an accomplished economist with several awards under her belt, including the recent EEA Arrow Award.

Global inequality may be falling, but the gap between haves and have-nots is growing

by Carlos Gradín, Finn Tarp, and Murray Leibbrandt

In one of the most unequal countries in the world, South Africa, the poorest 40% have annual incomes of less than US$1,000 (£727) per person. The comparable incomes for the richest 10% are more than US$39,000 per person – nearly 40 times higher than those of the bottom 40%.

COVID-19 and the Global South — from crisis response to sustainable development

by Rachel M. Gisselquist

Around the world, the pandemic, and the measures taken to address it, have had far reaching effects on poverty, inequality, and governance. And even as the need for global action has increased, many wealthy countries have turned inwards – with closed borders, stockpiling of vaccines, and prioritizing of resources for their own populations. Prospects for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, always a tall order, look increasingly grim.

Kanika Mahajan – IEA featured economist interview

by International Economic Association

Kanika Mahajan, a researcher engaged in UNU-WIDER's project on 'The changing nature of work and inequality', is the August 2021 featured economist of the International Economic Association (IEA). Kanika Mahajan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Ashoka University, India and the author of a major recent UNU-WIDER study on the Evolution of wage inequality in India (1983–2017).

LEARNING

MOOC | Industrial Policy in the 21st Century – the Challenge for Africa

UNU-WIDER is running its popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Industrial Policy in the 21st Century – the Challenge for Africa, as a self-paced course, with an instructor and regular opportunities to interact. Launching on 1 September, the 4-part course with John Page, senior researcher at UNU-WIDER, outlines how industrial policy designed for the 21st century could support a broader set of economic activities and provide the growth, jobs, and industrialization needed in Africa.

Enroll

Visiting PhD Fellowship

Our Visiting PhD Fellowship Programme gives registered doctoral students an opportunity to utilize the resources and facilities at UNU-WIDER for their PhD dissertation or thesis research on developing economies, and to work with our researchers in areas of mutual interest. Deadline for applications is 31 October 23:59 UTC+2.

Events

Webinar | Luis Felipe López Calva on inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

5 October 2021, online

On 5 October 2021, Luis Felipe López Calva joins the WIDER Webinar Series to discuss ways for Latin America and the Caribbean to escape the trap of low growth and high inequality. His presentation is based on the work done for the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Regional Human Development Report.

Presentation | Patricia Justino at 17th Annual Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) workshop

11 October 2021 – 12 October 2021, online

Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) organises their 17th Annual workshop on 11-12 October 2021 under the theme 'Conflict, Migration, and Displacement'. At the conference, Patricia Justino (co-founder and co-director of the HiCN) presents her research carried out under the Institutional Legacies of Violent Conflict project.

Lecture | Digital Technologies: Limits and Opportunities for Economic Development — An IEA Seminar hosted by Dani Rodrik

12 October 2021, online

A discussion featuring Dani Rodrik, Daren Acemoglu, Mahdi Ghodsi, Kunal Sen, Albert Park, and Haroon Bhorat. These leading economists discuss the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the role of technology in shaping welfare outcomes in developing countries.

Seminar | Jann Lay on taking stock of the global land rush: Few development benefits, many human and environmental risks (Land Matrix Analytical Report III)

13 October 2021, online

More than 10 years after the surge of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) by international investors for agricultural production, the Land Matrix Initiative has recorded land deals with a staggering total contract size of 30 million hectares by 2021.

Panel discussion | Kunal Sen at the 7th World Investment Forum

18 October 2021, online

During the 7th World Investment Forum, UNU-WIDER Director Kunal Sen joins the Academic Track opening plenary: ‘Setting the future research and policy agenda on international investment and development’.

Seminar | Re-visiting the Rwandan Genocide: New Book Presentation by Omar McDoom

20 October 2021, online

The Path to Genocide in Rwanda: Security, Opportunity, and Authority in an Ethnocratic State (Cambridge University Press, 2021) draws on extensive and unique field evidence, collected over many years, to offer rigorous answers to two simple but fundamental questions often asked about the genocide.

Seminar | Claudio Ferraz on agrarian elites, education, and long-term development

27 October 2021, online

In this seminar the relationship between the political power of agrarian elites and the spread of mass schooling in the early 20th century in Brazil is discussed. We use a novel dataset on the occupational structure of the voting elites in 1905 and historical censuses to test whether places where more voters belonged to the agriculture elite invested less in schooling.

Panel discussion | COP26: Are We Ready?

28 October 2021, online

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) will kick off at the end of October in Glasgow, UK. Accelerating climate action implies a fundamental shift away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy and transport. But how ready is the world for the Net Zero transition? On 28 October 2021 at 16:00 (UTC+3), UNU-WIDER organizes an online panel discussion titled COP26: Are We Ready?

Webinar | Brian Levy and Alan Hirsch on the challenge of economic inclusion in South Africa

2 November 2021, online

Brian Levy and Alan Hirsch will join WIDER webinar series to discuss their recent research on the combination of strong institutions and massive inequalities in South Africa. The webinar session will be chaired by UNU-WIDER Senior Research Fellow Rachel Gisselquist.

News

Building up fair taxation – New data research collaboration in Tanzania

UNU-WIDER has signed a Memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) to support technical analysis on national administrative tax data. With the help of the data, the aim is to find policy solutions to increase tax compliance and domestic revenues in the country.

Kunal Sen at the high-level LDC regional review meeting

UNU-WIDER director Kunal Sen was invited to contribute as a panelist to the High-level Asia-Pacific Regional Review Meeting on the Istanbul Programme of Action in Preparation for the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-5). The regional review meeting took place 30 August – 2 September 2021, in Geneva and virtually.

Several UNU-WIDER research projects in the media

Several projects from UNU-WIDER’s core work programme on Transforming economies, states, and societies are referenced in recent media. The citation of UNU-WIDER’s ongoing research demonstrate that the institute is a go-to source for new knowledge on development economics.

Good jobs transitions for post-pandemic development – UNU-WIDER in the 5th annual Jobs and Development Conference

The 5th annual Jobs and Development conference took place online over 1-3 September, hosted by the World Bank, IZA, the Network on Jobs and Development, and UNU-WIDER. The 2021 event focused on ‘good jobs transitions for post-pandemic development’ and featured over 50 papers from economists, policymakers, and development experts, plus keynotes by David Autor and Dani Rodrik. More than 1,600 people joined the online conference.

WIDER Working Paper Series

Working Paper

Norms that matter – exploring the distribution of women’s work between income generation, expenditure-saving, and unpaid domestic responsibilities in India

by Ashwini Deshpande and Naila Kabeer

Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash

Working Paper

Trends in inequality within countries using a novel dataset

by Carlos Gradín and Annalena Oppel

Working Paper

Social ties, clientelism, and the poor’s expectations of future service provision – receiving more, expecting less?

by Prisca Jöst and Ellen Lust

Working Paper

Voter coercion and pro-poor redistribution in rural Mexico

by Dragan Filipovich, Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, and Alma Santillán Hernández

Working Paper

Barriers to entry and the role of African multinational corporations – entrants in intermediate industrial products (inputs into construction)

by Grace Nsomba and Thando Vilakazi

Working Paper

The recentered influence function and unidimensional poverty measurement

by Carlos Gradín

Working Paper

Do gifts buy votes?
Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

by Jenny Guardado and Leonard Wantchekon

Working Paper

The impact of centralized bargaining on spillovers and the wage structure in monopsonistic labour markets

by Ihsaan Bassier

Working Paper

Childbirth and women's labour market transitions in India

by Rosa Abraham, Rahul Lahoti, and Hema Swaminathan

Publications

Journal Article | Data deprivations, data gaps and digital divides – lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

by Wim Naudé and Ricardo Vinuesa

OPEN ACCESS | This study draws lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for the relationship between data-driven decision making and global development.

Journal Article | Do gender wage differences within households influence women's empowerment and welfare? Evidence from Ghana

by Michael Danquah, Abdul Malik Iddrisu, Ernest Owusu Boakye, and Solomon Owusu

OPEN ACCESS | Using household data from the latest wave of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper utilizes machine learning techniques – IV LASSO – that allows for the treatment of ...

Book | Social mobility in developing countries – concepts, methods, and determinants

edited by Vegard Iversen, Anirudh Krishna, and Kunal Sen

Social mobility — defined as the ability to move from a lower to a higher level of education or occupational status, or from a lower to a higher social class or income group — is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society.

Policy Brief | Regional integration and Tanzania’s export performance

by Kwabena Adu-Ababio, Jukka Pirttilä, Pia Rattenhuber, and Toon Vanheukelom

Tanzania is, together with Kenya and Uganda, one of the founding members states of the East African Community (EAC), a regional intergovernmental organization which nowadays consists of six partner states in the region.

Background image by Jené Stephaniuk on Unsplash

Technical Note | Integration of indirect taxation to GHAMOD

by Kwabena Adu-Ababio, Jukka Pirttilä, Pia Rattenhuber, and Toon Vanheukelom

This note, with emphasis on VAT and excise taxes, illustrates how indirect taxes are modelled in the context of GHAMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ghana.

Background image by Ferdinand Stöhr on Unsplash

Technical Note | WIID Companion (May 2021): global income distribution

by Carlos Gradín

This document is part of a series of technical notes describing the compilation of a new companion database that complements the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). This technical note describes the construction of the global distribution companion datasets, version 31 May 2021.

Opportunities

Request for research proposals | World Income Inequality Database

UNU-WIDER is seeking to commission research papers from researchers working in inequality, income distribution, welfare, and related fields who would like to contribute to the World Income Inequality Database project. Submission deadline: 31 October 2021, 23:59 UTC+2.

Request for research proposals | Data for tax revenue mobilization

UNU-WIDER is seeking proposals for original research that employs the Government Revenue Dataset (GRD) from researchers working on tax revenue performance and related fields in developing countries and beyond. Submission deadline: 17 October 2021, 23:59 UTC+3

Vacancy | Senior Systems Analyst P-2

UNU-WIDER is looking for an outstanding individual with strong commitment and potential to join the Institute's Operational Support Unit in the ICT Team in a leadership role to strengthen the ICT division at UNU-WIDER. Closing date: 12 October 2021, 23:59 UTC+3

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