Tony Addison

• United Nations University (UNU)

In this paper, we develop an empirical framework that allows us to trace out a time path of metal prices. This framework shows that unpredictable shifts in demand, extraction costs and discovery of reserves, make estimation of the slope of this underlying trend an empirical question. Further, the low elasticity of demand and supply cause large vola...

We examine the effect of pandemics on selected commodity prices—in particular, those of zinc, copper, lead, and oil. We set up a vector autoregressive model and analyse data since the mid-nineteenth century to determine how prices reacted to pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu, 1957 Asian Flu, and 1968 Hong Kong Flu. We control for demand and su...

This book is about the challenges and opportunities facing developing countries in using their extractive industries (oil and gas and mining) to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. While resource wealth can yield prosperity, it can also cause acute social inequality, deep poverty, environmental damage, and political instability. There is...

This book is about the challenges and opportunities facing developing countries in using their extractive industries (oil and gas and mining) to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. While resource wealth can yield prosperity, it can also cause acute social inequality, deep poverty, environmental damage, and political instability. There is...

This paper presents a synopsis of the contextual conditions, factors and challenges under which the recent evolution of tax systems has taken place over the past three decades. The paper gives especial emphasis to the role of natural endowments, political economy, social structure and history, and the interplay between politics and tax revenues. Th...

Many low- and middle-income countries are achieving good rates of economic growth, while high inequality remains a priority concern. Some countries meanwhile have low growth, high inequality, and pervasive poverty-often linked to their fragility. There is now active debate on how countries should set themselves goals for achieving both absolute pov...

Every form of foreign-exchange inflow, including aid, can potentially cause real-exchange rate appreciation, with adverse consequences for the production of tradables (‘Dutch Disease’). Whether it does so depends on the policy response to the inflow. This paper investigates the issue for Morocco and Tunisia, over 1980–2009. We find that aid led to...

This chapter examines development policy objectives and their explicit focus on poverty reduction. It first considers different definitions of development policy objectives before discussing the roles that the market mechanism and the state should play in allocating society’s productive resources. In particular, it looks at the economic role of the...

This Special Issue explores macroeconomic effects of aid from various perspectives through a blend of studies, both conceptual and empirical in nature. The overall aim is to enhance the understanding of the macroeconomic dimensions of aid in the policy and research communities, and to inspire further innovative work in this important area. This ope...

This chapter explores the issues around the need to strengthen and sustain peace in post-conflict societies. These issues include the amount of focus to be given to absolute poverty reduction versus broader social inclusion, including the reduction of inequality. The chapter sets out a framework that can help country-level policy and action, then m...

This UNU-WIDER special issue of the Journal of International Development comprises a set of papers on the theme of aid and gender equality. While the topic of aid effectiveness has been examined in this journal and elsewhere, the focus on how well development assistance to countries and non-governmental organizations promotes gender equality and em...

measures are especially critical given the large scope and increased complexity of health services required. The universal health coverage (UHC) target of the health SDG stipulates that everyone can obtain essential health services at high quality without suffering financial hardship, yet quality has not been widely tracked. 11 There is no benefit...

Japan has provided foreign aid for some 60 years. Japan’s aid has grown and evolved as it became richer and as the developing world changed too. Japan is a strong supporter of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and revised its ODA Charter in 2003 to place poverty reduction at the center of aid policy. Japan’s concept of human security is even...

We explore the effects of foreign aid on FDI in a large number of aid-recipient countries using data since the mid-1980s. We control for the various determinants of FDI and we specifically include the interplay of aid with social cohesion and the interplay of aid with human capital. The empirical results from dynamic GMM estimations indicate that t...

This paper discusses past and current social policy strategies in the international aid architecture as an introduction to the UNU-WIDER Special Issue. Beginning in the 1990s, aid strategy and policy shifted to put a stronger emphasis on human development. This accelerated with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and will continue under the Sus...

Conflict depletes all forms of human and social capital, as well as supporting institutions. The scale of the human damage can overwhelm public action, as there are many competing priorities and resources are often insufficient. What then should be the priorities for ‘post-conflict’ policy? Should it give, for example, higher priority to health or...

see: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2014/en_GB/03-2014_2_TA/

This is an introduction to the UNU-WIDER special issue of World Development on aid policy and the macroeconomic management of aid. We provide an overview of the 10 studies, grouping them under three sub-themes: the aid–growth relationship; the supply-side of aid (including its level, volatility, and coordination of donors); and the macroeconomic fr...

see: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2014/en_GB/02-2014/

Part IV Policy issues 16: Tony Addison: Development

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2013/en_GB/wp2013-144/ To continue its economic growth and create new and better livelihoods, Africa must transform the productive side of its economy. Ongoing globalization—in trade, finance, and technology—opens up new possibilities for structural transformation, but also new risks as Africa’s...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2013/en_GB/wp2013-132/ We examine aid-induced Dutch Disease—after controlling for the effects of remittances and FDI flows—in the context of two North African countries, Morocco and Tunisia. We do so by performing a multivariate time series analysis of aggregated annual data over the period 1980...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2013/en_GB/wp2013-098/ Commodity price shocks are an important type of external shock and are often cited as a problem for economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper quantifies the impact of agricultural commodity price shocks using a near vector autoregressive model. The novel aspect of...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2013/en_GB/06-07-2013-TA/

8.1 Introduction Conflict prevails in all societies, at all levels of per capita income. Successful societies are those that build institutions, both formal and informal, capable of channelling conflict into mechanisms for its non-violent expression and eventual resolution. Violence then becomes the exception in social life, and when violence does...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2013/en_GB/04-2013-TA-MNZ/

Conflict prevails in all societies, at all levels of per capita income. Successful societies are those that build institutions, both formal and informal, capable of channelling conflict into mechanisms for its nonviolent expression and eventual resolution. Violence then becomes the exception in social life, and when violence does occur, it is conta...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2012/en_GB/wp2012-056/ The central argument of this study is that given the magnitude of the investment in infrastructure that is required, especially in Africa, the role of foreign aid in the future should be distinctly different. While aid will be required to continue to fill the ‘savings gap’...

see: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2012/en_GB/03-2012-Addison-Zarazua/

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2012/en_GB/02-2012-Addison-/

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2012/en_GB/01-2012-angle-recom/

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2012/en_GB/01-2012-Addison-Zarazua/

24. The Political Economy of Fragile States

Poverty reduction has become the central goal of development policies over the last decade but there is a growing realization that the poorest people rarely benefit from poverty reduction programmes. Microfinance programmes can help poor people improve their lives but generally such programmes do not reach the extremely poor and the chronic poor: c...

http://wiego.org/sites/wiego.org/files/publications/files/Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO_EDP_Bridging_Perspectives.pdf

The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial flows and falling remittances. This is the first crisis. Simultaneously, climate change remains unchec...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2011/en_GB/10-2011-addison-scott-victorero/

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2011/en_GB/09-2011-addison/

The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial flows and falling remittances. This is the first crisis. Simultaneously, climate change remains unchec...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/newsletter/articles-2010/en_GB/05-2010/

The paper analyses credibility and reputation in the context of peace negotiations. Where war provides economic gains to one side, peace is not incentive compatible, and peace agreements will necessarily degenerate, as they become time inconsistent. Levels of conflict are an increasing function of greed and rents, but decreasing in the direct costs...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2010/en_GB/wp2010-01/ The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial flows, and falling remitta...

The expansion of extractive industries in developing countries, dominated by large investments, has produced divided opinion and reaction among scholars, policy makers and civil society with regard to its impact on host countries’ economic performance, governance and peace. Facing that division, the expectation is that the inflow of resources produ...

Summaries To strengthen the help that programme aid gives to poor, we must strengthen its ability to increase the participation of the poor in growth. To do this requires a detailed appraisal during a programme's preparation to identify the expected impact on poverty of both the resource transfer of aid and the accompanying policy changes. Without...

Includes cutting-edge research on poverty dynamics and their measurement Interdisciplinary approach includes contributions from leading anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists Explains ways in which quantitative and qualitative research can be integrated to further our understand of poverty This collection of essays pro...

The chapters in this book provide an examination of the concepts and methods that can be used to understand poverty dynamics. It does this from an interdisciplinary perspective and includes the work of anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. The contributions included highlight the need to conceptualize poverty from a m...

The chapters in this book provide an examination of the concepts and methods that can be used to understand poverty dynamics. It does this from an interdisciplinary perspective and includes the work of anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. The contributions included highlight the need to conceptualize poverty from a m...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/books-and-journals/2009/en_GB/mpw/

http://www.ssrc.org/workspace/images/crm/new_publication_3/%7B1ed88247-585f-de11-bd80-001cc477ec70%7D.pdf

http://www.chronicpoverty.org/uploads/publication_files/CPR2_ReportFull.pdf

War has become central to the development policy debate in a way that the pioneers of development studies would have found inconceivable. Although struggles for independence were often bloody, there was at least an expectation in the 1950s and 1960s that new countries would eventually consolidate a measure of political stability sufficient to enabl...

By way of conclusion, we will discuss how to secure broad-based recovery in the post-conflict period. The state’s role, versus that of the market, in driving economic development is a question as old as development economics itself (Collier 2005; Rodrik 2007). It is especially pertinent in a post-conflict context, for contemporary civil wars do a v...

One of the difficulties faced by everyone working with post-conflict countries is the multiplicity of ‘overarching’ goals. The first of these is ‘peace’: most ambitiously, a complete end to large-scale organized violence or, more modestly, a reduction in its intensity. The second is ‘political participation’: ranging from introducing (or restoring)...

Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for post-conflict countries as well as the international community. Countries and their donor partners face multiple priorities – rebuilding infrastructure, assisting war-damaged communities, and re-creating weakened institutions – with too few resources to meet the...

Artists, musicians, and writers have always been great travellers. Today, their talent circulates in new ways, and takes new forms, as the creative industries expand globally in a marriage of media technology and the traditional arts. The growing international market for cultural talent can do much to help countries diversify their economies, and i...

This paper introduces a significant new multi-disciplinary collection of studies of poverty dynamics, presenting the reader with the latest thinking by a group of researchers who are leaders in their respective disciplines. It argues that there are three main fronts on which progress must be made if we are to dramatically deepen the understanding o...

http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230594074 For much of the last 30 years the global economy has not worked well for most poor countries or for most poor people. But there are now grounds for optimism. Presently, global liquidity is ample, pushing investors into parts of the world they previously avoided, and private investme...

Covering more than the conventional “food-only” role of the agriculture, the international contributors to Agriculture, Human Security, and Global Peace detail how the solution to agricultural problems can lead to the general socioeconomic and political development of impoverished countries. http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/97815575348...

http://www.amazon.com/Globalization-Political-Violence-Globalizations-Globalisation/dp/0415425344#reader_0415425344

Today, large volumes of global savings move through an increasingly integrated global capital market in search of investment opportunities. Capital is abundant. The developing world is receiving an increasing share of these flows, to the benefit of private investment — in production, trade and infrastructure — as well as to the balance of payments...

No development issue has quite captured the public imagination in the same way as debt relief. The juxtaposition of the billions of dollars owed and the grinding poverty of the countries concerned deliver an easy campaigning slogan and a seemingly straightforward policy recommendation: cancel the debt. But at the same time debt is also a complex is...

Institutional improvement can be a very slow and uncertain process when institutional quality is weak. In the meantime, countries have launched far-reaching economic reforms whose success is predicated on a large investment response. However, the uncertainties attending institutional reform can raise perceptions of risk, thereby muting investment r...

In August 1986, the year after UNU-WIDER began its work, the Institute hosted a conference to honour the memory of Carlos Díaz-Alejandro. Nearly 20 years on it is instructive to look over the resulting conference volume, Debt, Stabilization and Development (Calvo et al. 1989) to see how the world has, and has not, moved on. The book contains much d...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/books-and-journals/2006/en_GB/fiscal-policy-paperback/

As one of globalisation's most visible dimensions, foreign direct investment (FDI) is central to the prospects for developing countries in the world economy. Key issues include the direction of causation between FDI and growth, the potential role of the new information and communication technologies in attracting FDI flows (as well as the role of F...

Much has changed in international finance in the twenty years since UNU-WIDER was founded. This paper identifies five broad contours of what we might expect in the next twenty years: the flow of capital from ageing societies to the more youthful economies of the South; the growth in the financial services industry in emerging economies and the cons...

Artists, musicians and writers have always been great travellers. Today, their talent circulates in new ways, and takes new forms, as the creative industries expand globally in a marriage of media technology and the traditional arts. The growing international market for cultural talent can do much to help countries diversify their economies, and im...

http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/books-and-journals/2006/en_GB/20-years/

Growth, poverty reduction, and social peace are all undermined when public expenditure management and taxation are weak and when the fiscal deficit and public debt are not managed successfully. And large-scale aid and debt relief cannot work without a good fiscal system. The macroeconomic frameworks of many poor countries are improving, but fiscal...

see: http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/09/52/78/715aa312.pdf This paper discusses how the poor-c ountry debt crisis arose as a result of low growth, uncoordinated donor-lending and the absence of a market that could mark down the debt’s value. It assesses the state of play with the Heavily Inde bted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initia- tive and Multi...

Investigates how aid might prevent conflicts from breaking out or becoming worse.