World Institute for Development Economics Research

About: World Institute for Development Economics Research is a facility organization based out in Helsinki, Finland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Poverty & Population. The organization has 110 authors who have published 525 publications receiving 17316 citations.

Climate Change, Growth and Infrastructure Investment: The Case of Mozambique

Abstract: Climate change may damage road infrastructure, to the potential detriment of economic growth, particularly in developing countries. To quantitatively assess climate change's consequences, we incorporate a climate–infrastructure model based on stressor–response relationships directly into a recursive dynamic economy-wide model to estimate and compare road damages with other climate change impact channels. We apply this framework to Mozambique and simulate four future climate scenarios. Our results indicate that climate change through 2050 is likely to place a drag on economic growth and development prospects. The economic implications of climate change appear to become more pronounced from about 2030. Nevertheless, the implications are not so strong as to drastically diminish development prospects. Our findings suggest that impact assessments should include damages to long-run assets, such as road infrastructure, imposed by climate change.

Vulnerability, Trade, Financial Flows and State Failure in Small Island Developing States

Abstract: Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are very different to other developing countries. Relative to GDP they have the highest levels of foreign trade and aid receipts of all developing countries. Remittances from abroad are a far more important source of income for SIDS, and some depend very heavily on export revenues. The quality of governance varies tremendously among SIDS, they are over-represented among countries classified as fragile states and many are prone to state failure. These and other factors combine to make SIDS highly vulnerable to external economic shocks. Achieving development in SIDS is as a consequence an especially complex task that requires an understanding of the roles played by aid, trade, remittances and governance in these countries. This paper looks at these issues, along with providing various stylised facts about SIDS. In so doing it serves as a background and broad contextual setting for the papers that follow in this Special Issue on ‘Fragility and Development in Sma...

Facing the Development Challenge in Mozambique

Abstract: Following Mozambique’s economic collapse in 1986, the country began a wide-ranging process of reform, with the support of the international community. The diagnosis was of an economy that failed to maintain monetary control, consumed beyond its means, focused production excessively on nontraded goods, and relied on inefficient and inflexible microeconomic structures. Nevertheless, Mozambique was also at war. The pace of stabilization and structural adjustment quickened after 1992, when, concurrent with the demise of apartheid, civil strife finally came to an end. After more than 10 years of adjustment, the reform program has now been essentially implemented. Yet, this does not imply, as shown in this study, that sufficient conditions for sustained economic development are in place. Mozambique remains very poor, and even under highly optimistic assumptions about the future, the development process is set to last for decades. This report attempts to respond to some of the basic development challenges facing Mozambique and to provide both qualitative and quantitative insights for policymaking in the years to come. Throughout, the issues addressed are approached from an economy wide perspective.This study forms a part of the multicountry research initiative, Macroeconomic Reforms and Regional Integration in Southern Africa. This initiative covers six countries in the region and pays particular attention to the evaluation of the merits of alternative development strategies. The choice and design of an appropriate development strategy is by no means immediately evident for any developing country. However, for a country with abundant arable land and scarce human and physical capital, such as Mozambique, the role of agriculture in development is particularly interesting. In keeping with the focus on agriculture, a social accounting matrix (SAM) for 1995, with significant agricultural sector detail, was constructed as part of this study. The SAM contains 40 activities, including 13 agricultural and 2 food-processing activities, 3 factors of production, and 2 households (urban and rural). It captures two innovative but fundamental features of the Mozambican economy: high marketing costs for domestic, imported, and exported goods; and the significant prevalence of home consumption, particularly for rural households

Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades and the emergence of social assistance in Latin America

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the political and economic context under which Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades was introduced to prelude the emergence of social assistance in Latin America. The paper identifies four distinctive features of the programme that were revolutionary in their own right. First, the Progresa-Oportunidades embraced a multidimensional approach to poverty, linking income transfers with simultaneous interventions in health, education and nutrition. Second, the programme focused on the poor. This is in clear contrast to generalised food subsidies and other targeted interventions that dominated the antipoverty agenda in the past. Third, the programme followed a complex system of identification and selection of beneficiaries to prevent discretionary political manipulation of public funds. Finally, an independent impact evaluation protocol proved to be critical for both improving the programme’s effectiveness and strengthening its legitimacy across different political factions and constituencies. The paper concludes that the success of Progresa-Oportunidades must be understood in a broader context, where a harsh economic and political environment, coupled with a rapid democratisation and increasing political competition, laid down the foundations for the introduction and then sustained expansion of the programme