This paper, using a new set of social development indices, explores the measurement of social development across Africa, and how this relates to broader development patterns and measurement. Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize the importance of informal institutions, such...

The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated processes of labour transition from industrial work to the informal economy, which have always characterized the life of the working poor. Exploring urban-to-rural labour transitions through a feminist political economy lens and adopting a life-cycle approach...

Oil was discovered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) just 50 years ago. During that time, UAE has been able to transform itself into a rapidly modernizing country, which is fast becoming a major economic hub and a key player on the international economic landscape. This paper discusses a number...

This paper examines the relationship between differences in civil society development under communism and the political, economic and institutional change and transformation after 1989. We collected a unique dataset on nature and intensity of dissident activities in 27 former communist countries...

Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, this paper engages with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural-urban ethnographic research from Zambia. It argues that people living in...

This paper aims to depict the post-Second World War poverty and inequality trends in Asia, its sub-regions, and individual economies. Efforts are made to explain these trends and explore the interrelationship between growth, poverty, and inequality in Asia. Analytical results confirm significant...

The paper reviews what we know about the possibilities of designing and implementing policy measures that raise the contribution of the extractive industries' production/consumption links to economic growth and wellbeing, and reviews how policies pursued by various governments have succeeded. It...

The paper investigates the determinants of productivity growth in China. It also analyses the sustainability of the country's industrial growth by estimating sectoral productivity, accounting for energy usage and emission since the start of the market-oriented reforms in the late 1970s. The...

Industrial policies have played an important role in successful development. Through these policies, governments intervene in the market's sectoral allocation of resources and choice of technologies. Earlier industrial policies had a narrow remit and made use of a limited number of instruments....

This paper uses normalized constant elasticity of substitution production functions to estimate the elasticity of substitution and labour-augmenting technical change in South Africa over the period 1994-2012. We find elasticities of 0.6-0.9 and positive labour-augmenting technical change, which...