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Reflections on Transition: Twenty Years after the Fall of The Berlin WallGérard Roland The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki...
Gérard Roland The above titled book, published by Palgrave Macmillan 2012, brings together contributions from a conference that took place in Helsinki...
This paper adds to the recent literature on firm-level corruption by relying on rich data including detailed information on the purpose and amounts of bribe payments among Vietnamese micro, small, and medium firms. Using industry-location averages to...
Malokele Nanivazo Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo...
In the first two or three decades of independence, Nigeria, like the rest of Africa. placed heavy emphasis on expanding educational opportunities from primary school through university. This has resulted in a very impressive increase in the number of...
This paper tests the effect of corruption on the efficiency of capital investment. Using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, covering 90 developing and transition economies, we consider whether the cost of informal bribe payments...
Le génocide rwandais est le résultat final d'une combinaison de mécanismes dont aucun ne peut revendiquer être prioritaire ou indépendant des autres. Parmi ces mécanismes figurent une extrême pauvreté et la réduction des perspectives d'avenir pour la...
There has been a phenomenal global increase in the proportion of women in politics in the last 20 years. While there is evidence that raising the share of women politicians has substantive impacts on the composition of government spending, there is...
This paper examines irregular South-South migration from China to Ghana, and the role it has played in transforming livelihoods and broader developmental landscapes. It looks at the entry from the mid-2000s of approximately 50,000 Chinese migrants...
Can a society suffering contests between rich and poor achieve good governance in the face of endemic corruption? We examine a stylized poor state with weak institutions in which a ‘culture of evasion’ damages state authority. Many evade tax payments...
Data from several investor surveys suggest that macroeconomic instability, investment restrictions, corruption and political instability have a negative impact on foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa. However, the relationship between FDI and...
This paper presents a model allowing one to analyze the joint determination of inequality, taxes, human capital and growth. We consider the political economy of redistribution between three income groups in a dynamic economy. The paper seeks to...
We analyse policymakers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability when...
Rwanda's genocide is the end-result of a combination of processes, none of which can easily be priorized or separated from the others. These processes are: extreme pauperization and reduction of life chances for a majority of the poor, especially...
Across Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia, political candidates often attempt to buy the votes of the most socio-economically deprived communities. But new...
Local governments in India—known as panchayats—are sometimes criticised for failing to deliver benefits earmarked for vulnerable regions or households...
Extractive industries are spread across mining of metal and minerals, oil and gas, among others. Multinationals in these sectors are confronted with different challenges ranging from corruption, political risk, economic uncertainty, sunk costs, and...
In an environment with extensive corruption where much of the population evades paying their full taxes due, we tackle the question of optimal taxation when constituencies with opposing objectives (the poor and the rich) push tax policy in different...
The United Kingdom’s (UK) property markets are thought to be a common destination for corrupt and criminal assets and money laundering, with investment often through offshore shell companies. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we...
This paper empirically investigates the link between the level of government revenue per capita and six indicators of quality of governance in an unbalanced panel data set consisting of all countries in the world (217) using data from 1980 to 2020...
'I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more… We are coming for your ill...
Does foreign aid end up in the pockets of elites instead of contributing to inclusive economic development? A recently published journal article...
Community-driven reconstruction (CDR) is an approach to post-war reconstruction that gives discretion to local community councils in establishing priorities and overseeing the implementation of reconstruction and development activities. A series of...
In many countries, news of an oil discovery or the award of an exploration license is rarely greeted with enthusiasm by the general public. Any hopes...
One of the most pressing challenges in development policy is to bring about rapid, sustained, and inclusive growth in developing countries. Apart from...
It is widely believed that clientelism—the giving of material goods in return for electoral support—is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development...
While the short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on lives and livelihoods are well understood, we know little about the effect of the pandemic for longer-term outcomes such as corruption. We look at the historical data on political and economic...
This second of two papers on global oil theft discusses ways to reduce oil theft, misappropriation, and fraud. At US$133 billion per year, oil is the largest stolen natural resource globally, while fuel is the most smuggled natural resource. Oil...
We show that the incorporation of offshore entities increases when oil and gas exploration licences are awarded. We exploit leaked data on the incorporation of shell companies and detailed information on tax havens and the awarding rounds of oil...
This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum...
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
UNU-WIDER had a busy September. We celebrated our 30th birthday with some 600 people at our three-day conference on ‘Mapping the Future of Development...
Foreign aid can contribute to sustainable forestry in many ways. The goal is to secure forest benefits of the future, without compromising the needs of the present generations. This paper elaborates on forestry aid as it has evolved in the past...