Using publicly available databases and drawing on a wide range of indicators, this paper reviews the institutional performance of Mozambique across seven broad categories: rule of law and judicial independence; voice and freedom of expression/association; political participation; accountability and transparency; political instability and violence, and external relations; state legitimacy and political leadership; and governance and state capacity. Overall, the selected indicators point to similar trends within each dimension and suggest limited progress during the last decades. Still, it is fundamental that these insights and the scores presented by the indicators are put into context, and that we understand the historical path of Mozambique, the internal and external factors at play, and the fact that it takes time for progress achieved to be reflected in this type of data.

Time-use statistics are sensitive to measurement error, especially errors that might be introduced based on whether the informant is reporting on herself or reporting on others in the household. In this paper, we use the nationally representative time-use survey in India and propensity score matching methods to investigate how self- and proxy reporting impact the reported time spent on various activities by men and women. Theoretically, we examine the mechanisms underpinning the differences in reporting and empirically test our hypothesis. Proxy informants tend to report higher time use for both men and women on employment activities (14–26 per cent) and lower time use on production for self-consumption, unpaid domestic work, and care work (5–33 per cent) as compared to self-reports. On average, female proxies differ more from self-reports when reporting about both men and women in their households as compared to male proxies. Investigating the mechanisms, we find that the self–proxy differences are not due to random error but are systemic. Information asymmetry between the self and proxy respondents plays a key role—spouses and self–proxy respondents with similar characteristics have smaller reporting differences than non-spouses and other respondents. Gendered perception of what activities are classified as work also play a key role in the differences.

analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research. The Institute is funded through income from an endowment fund with additional contributions to its work programme from Finland and Sweden, as well as earmarked contributions for specific projects from a variety of donors.

UNU-WIDER employs a fair use policy for reasonable reproduction of UNU-WIDER copyrighted content-such as the reproduction of a table or a figure, and/or text not exceeding 400 words-with due acknowledgement of the original source, without requiring explicit permission from the copyright holder.

New developments of existing technologies over time have led to emergent patterns of technology adoption and accordingly changing impacts on economy and society. Focusing on the arrival of mobile Internet in the early 2010s in developing countries, we identified significant positive effects of mobile Internet on provinces' average household income in Vietnam. The effect sizes are larger for lower-income quintiles groups and for rural areas, suggesting the more inclusive changing impact of the innovation over the last decade. Preliminary evidence of impact mechanisms via skilled employment rates and (formal) wages are also presented. The evidence from Vietnam, a lower middle-income country, can bring further understanding in the extent of development impacts of second-generation mobile for development (M4D 2.0) in particular and ICT for development (ICT4D) in general.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project Detecting and countering illicit financial flows that is implemented in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen. The project is part of the Domestic Revenue Mobilization programme, which is financed through specific contributions by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).

This paper explores disparities between White, Black, and Hispanic families using a measure of lifetime earnings developed by Jacobs et al. (2022) for the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Lifetime earnings are a particularly important measure of well-being, with relevance for wealth accumulation among other economic and social outcomes, but they are under-studied in the context of racial disparities. We describe how the different components of lifetime earningsincluding annual earnings of workers, number of working household members, and number of years of employment during the working life-vary by race. We then decompose the differences in lifetime earnings using the recentered influence function and show that human capital-related variables, including educational attainment and years of full-time employment, account for most of the observed differences in lifetime earnings between White, Black, and Hispanic families. We also explore the contribution of business ownership to explained disparities in lifetime earnings and find that it is significant and that business ownership's explanatory power increases at the top of the lifetime-earnings distribution.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project Southern Africa-Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED).

We estimate the impact of household liquidity provision on macroeconomic stabilization using the 2020 CARES Act mortgage forbearance program. We leverage intermediation frictions in forbearance induced by mortgage servicers to identify the effect of reducing short-term payments with little change in long-term debt obligations on local labor market outcomes. Following statewide business reopenings, a 1 percentage point increase in the share of mortgages in forbearance leads to a 30 basis point increase in monthly employment growth in nontradable industries. In a model incorporating geographical heterogeneity in intermediation frictions, these responses imply a household-level marginal propensity to consume out of increased liquidity that aligns with existing estimates for direct fiscal transfers. The implied debt-financed fiscal multiplier effects of forbearance are sizable but depend on the repayment terms of deferred payments and the monetary policy stance.

analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research. The Institute is funded through income from an endowment fund with additional contributions to its work programme from Finland and Sweden, as well as earmarked contributions for specific projects from a variety of donors.