Most numerical targets within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are overly ambitious for the poorest countries when interpreted as country-specific goals. As a consequence, the current system undermines accountability and ownership and jeopardizes the public support the...

On July 7, 2005, the Faculty of Economics of the University of Göttingen awarded Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen with an honorary doctorate in economics in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the fields of welfare and development economics. On the occasion of the award,...

Paper prepared for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 1992. This essay looks at the world as a whole and examines what innovations are needed in order to enable all members of humankind to play their full role in society and to develop and exercise their...

Violent conflict is common among the poorest countries and clearly one of the most important barriers to growth, destroying physical, human, and social capital, often in the long run. At the same time, it is a development `trap' that is not easy to escape from as poverty has also been found to...

Migration continues to be a very important income diversification strategy, especially for poor populations in developing countries. However, while there has been much analysis on the economic consequences of migration for migrants and the receiving regions, whether internal migration improves...

In contrast to UNDP’s wildly successful Human Development Index (HDI), UNDP’s gender-related indices have had a rather rocky history. To this day, the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) has not produced a measure that has met the requirements of policy-makers, academics and development...