This paper discusses the emergence of two new middles since the Cold War, namely middle-income countries and people living above absolute poverty but below a security-from poverty-line. The paper sets out what has happened. It is argued that although there has been substantial economic growth,...

Corruption is widely believed to negatively affect economic growth. However, many East and Southeast Asia countries either achieved or currently are achieving impressively rapid economic growth despite widespread corruption - the 'East Asian Paradox'. Is this negative relationship equally likely...

We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic modeling that incorporates climate uncertainty and allows...

This paper re-examines the determinants and consequences of redistribution in light of improved data and methods relative to earlier literature. In particular, we use the latest version of the UNU-WIDER' Income Inequality Database to have the best available estimates of both pre- and...

This paper uses recently published top 1% income share series in studying the inequality-development association. The top income shares data are of high quality and cover about a century for some countries and thus provide an interesting opportunity to study slow development processes. The...

We introduce two separate datasets - the Global Consumption Dataset and the Global Income Dataset - containing an unprecedented portrait of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world. The benchmark version of the dataset presents estimates in...

This paper examines the relationship between trade (exports), growth, and inequality, using a panel of 100 countries over 30 years (1980 to 2010). As there is no clear theoretical relationship between trade (exports) and inequality, and as inequality can be considered a proxy for 'governance...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis. The task for economic policy is to help keep people alive, enterprises afloat, and households out of poverty. The pandemic has macroeconomic dimensions. First, it affects macroeconomic stability and growth. Second, the tools of...

Success in development over the past half-century was based on manufacturing-led export growth. Because the share of global employment in manufacturing will decline, manufacturing won't play the same role in the coming decades. An increase in manufacturing employment won't suffice to meet the...

This study presents new empirical results, using microdata from the LIS database, on development patterns in economic inequality for a set of countries that are less covered in the empirical literature, mostly due to the lack of appropriate data. After discussing the main challenges when...