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Publications (13)
– The challenge for Africa
Why is there so little industry in Africa? Does it matter? What can be done about it? These were questions I put to Finn Tarp and Louis Kasekende, then the Director of UNU-WIDER and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank respectively, at a 2008 meeting of the African Economic Research...
At the end of last year, I filmed a lecture that will be part of a massive open online course (MOOC) on industrialization in Africa. The course is based on a joint research project between the Brookings Institution and UNU-WIDER called Jobs, poverty and structural change in Africa. The topic of the...
– UNU-WIDER provides open access to a wealth of information
The question ‘why is there so little industrialization in Africa?’ has been a key focus of UNU-WIDER researchers and research partners for the last decade. Many Asian economies started their industrialization processes from conditions similar to those that African countries are experiencing today...
This week I attended the 28th Africa Industrialization Day at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Even sympathetic readers may reasonably ask, why hold another African Industrialization Day at all? The short answer is Africa needs structural change to grow, to create jobs, and to reduce...
Blog
Researchers, policy makers, and representatives of international institutions recently gathered in Dar es Salaam to discuss prospects for a transformation of Tanzania’s economy. The country has experienced significant growth over the past two decades, but this growth has not been inclusive, and...
Blog
27 August 2014 In this interview Justin Lin, Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, talks about how the state can enable the process of structural transformation of the economy, how to fund the necessary investments of this transformation, structuralism versus new structuralism, how...
Blog
Robert J. Strom Interest in the study of entrepreneurship has flourished among scholars in recent years. This research has brought to light, among other things, the important role of entrepreneurship and innovation in economic growth. We know that innovative entrepreneurs—those who bring new...
Blog
Wim Naudé and Adam Szirmai Nobody can be left in any doubt as to the importance of innovation for prosperity on reading[i] that ‘People living in the first decade of the twentieth century did not know modern dental and medical equipment, penicillin, bypass operations, safe births, control of...
Blog
Tommaso Ciarli, Saeed Parto and Maria Savona Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world with an estimated per capita income of 300 US dollars and average mortality age of 47 years. By all accounts, progress to date for moving Afghanistan out of poverty and on to a path of economic...
Blog
Sameeksha Desai Across countries, entrepreneurship is shown to support wealth and income generation, job creation and innovations in product and process. The precise role of entrepreneurship in any specific country depends on the institutional context. Much of our understanding of institutions and...
Blog
– Lessons from Finland
Otto Toivanen At least since the 1950s it has been recognized that innovation is central to economic growth. It has also been well understood that innovations both generate and rely on externalities. These twin facts, together with market failures most often thought to arise in financing of...
Blog
Jurgen Brauer and Robert Haywood The role of the sovereign state in driving and resolving violent social conflict remains central to studies of peace and governance. Based on a co-authored paper, this article considers the role that territorial-based sovereignty plays in violent social conflict and...
Blog
– Some Lessons for Developing Countries
William Lazonick Defined as the act of forming a new business, entrepreneurship is viewed as a prime way in which individualism can contribute to economic development. Recently The Economist depicted entrepreneurs as “global heroes” who can lead us out of the current economic crisis.[1] Nevertheless...
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