The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) present a new and coherent way of thinking about diverse facets of development. Implicit in the framework of the SDGs is that the goals are interconnected and interdependent. To translate such critical ideas into reality, countries need new skills,...

The development and application of advanced manufacturing technologies (known as Industry 4.0) have been enabled by the fast-paced process of digital transformation. These transformations are expected to have major implications on the reorganisation of global value chains as well as on labour...

With its unique multilateral assets, the United Nations Development System (UNDS) should be playing a key role in assisting governments and other stakeholders with their implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. But this requires change. Despite improvements in recent...

This report contributes to the project "Securing agriculture and rural development in times of COVID-19, pathways to regional responses for recovery, reforms, and resilience" by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The objectives of the report are threefold: 1) to...

Can local elections introduced in a post-conflict context help to foster societal peace, or do they create new potential for conflict? The value of post-conflict elections has been the matter of controversial academic debates. However, this literature largely neglects to take into account the...

This paper reviews the current state of literature on the impacts of urbanization on rural development in developing countries, with an emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It also provides a conceptual framework for linking these phenomena, and identifies research gaps that have important...

We model a banking union of two countries whose banking sectors differ in their average probability of failure and externalities between the two countries arise from cross-border bank ownership. The two countries face (i) a regulatory (super- visory) decision of which banks are to be shut down...

If school closures and social-distancing experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic impeded children's skill development, they may leave a lasting legacy in human capital. To understand the pandemic's effects on school children, this paper combines a review of the emerging international literature...

This paper studies the relationship between patience and comparative development through a combination of reduced-form analyses and model estimations. Based on a globally representative dataset on time preference in 76 countries, we document two sets of stylized facts. First, patience is...

We present novel evidence for the influence of malaria exposure on the geographic location of Chinese economic activities in Africa. The hypothesis is based on the observation that many Chinese aid projects and infrastructure contractors rely on Chinese personnel. High malaria exposure might...