The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) is part of the

United Nations University The (UNU) is the think tank and academic arm of the United Nations. Headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, with diplomatic status as a UN institution, its mission is to help resolve global issues related to human development and welfare thro ...

(UNU). UNU-WIDER, the first research and training centre to be established by the UNU, is an international academic organization set up with the aim of promoting peace and progress by bringing together leading scholars from around the world to tackle pressing global problems.

UNU-WIDER

The establishment of the UNU and UNU-WIDER

In 1969 the UN Secretary General

U Thant Thant (; ; January 22, 1909 – November 25, 1974), known honorifically as U Thant (), was a Burmese diplomat and the third secretary-general of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, the first non-Scandinavian to hold the position. He held t ...

suggested that the time had arrived when serious consideration might be given to establishing an international university. An international university, the Secretary-General said, would be devoted to the Charter objectives of peace and progress. It would be staffed with professors from many nations and all parts of the world. The university would thus serve to break down the barriers that created misunderstanding and mistrust between nations and cultures. The UNU was established by the General Assembly on 6 December 1973 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training, and the dissemination of knowledge related to the pressing global problems of human survival, development, and welfare. The UNU started its activities in 1975 at its headquarters in Tokyo. The UNU established UNU-WIDER following a brainstorming of leading economists of the day outlining the need for an institution to undertake a sustained effort for a more comprehensive understanding of the forces at work in the global economic system and their consequences for specific developing country situations and at the international level In November 1983 Finland offered to host UNU-WIDER in its capital Helsinki, providing premises for the Institute and an endowment fund of US$25 million. UNU-WIDER was founded by a Host Country Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding signed by the then Foreign Minister of Finland, Paavo Väyrynen, and the Rector of UNU, Soedjatmoko, on the 4th of February 1984.

Mandate

UNU-WIDER's mandate is to undertake multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on structural changes affecting the living conditions of the world's poorest people; provide a forum for professional interaction and advocacy of policies leading to equitable and environmentally

sustainable growth Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The desir ...

; and train researchers and government officials in the field of economic and social policy making.

History

Following the approval by the Finnish Parliament, the Host Country Agreement came into force on 20 June 1984.

Lal Jayawardena Lal R. Jayawardena ( Sinhala:ලාල් ජයවර්ධන) (1935–2004) was a noted Sri Lankan economist and diplomat. He was the first director of the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) (1985–1993) and Sri Lankan ...

was appointed the inaugural director the 1st of March in 1985, and the institute was initially located at premises at Annankatu 42C in Helsinki, Finland.

Research

During its existence UNU-WIDER has produced a large amount of research on the broad topics of poverty, inequality and growth. The Research Programme changes every two years. It is constructed by the Director in consultation with the UNU-WIDER Board following extensive discussions with UNU-WIDER research staff, leading economists, and donor government representatives. Areas of research have spanned all facets and levels of development economics including topics like; Finance and trade; economic growth and the environment; women and development; international migration and refugees; micro-simulation of tax benefit reforms; social impact of privatization; fiscal policies for growth; transition and institutions; development aid; global trends in inequality and poverty; personal assets from a global perspective and many more. During the mid-1980s the Horn of Africa was confronting widespread famine. As this coincided with the launch of the very first UNU-WIDER research programme, the theme of “Hunger and Poverty: The Poorest Billion” was included in it. This research was directed by

Jean Drèze Jean Drèze (born 1959) is a Belgian-born Indian welfare economist, social scientist and activist. He has worked on several developmental issues facing India like social welfare and gender inequality. His co-authors include Nobel laureate in e ...

and Nobel Laureate

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...

. It has been argued that the resulting three volumes of study transformed the thinking on issues of famine and food security at the time. In the late 1990s WIDER undertook a major study of income inequality trends throughout the world under the direction of its then director Giovanni Andrea Cornia. The study uncovered so called “new causes” of inequality linked to excessively liberal economic policies and the way in which economic reforms have been implemented. Furthermore, the study produced the first version of the World Income Inequality Database (WIID). It is a comprehensive and freely available database of statistics on inequality trends within countries. Since 2009, under director Finn Tarp, UNU-WIDER has concentrated widely on the “triple crisis” of food, climate change and finance.

Nobel laureates in economics associated with UNU-WIDER

Elinor Ostrom Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American Political science, political scientist and Political economy, political economist whose work was associated with New institutional economics, New Institutio ...

, 2009

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...

, 2008

Joseph E. Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...

, 2001

, 1998

John C. Harsanyi John Charles Harsanyi ( hu, Harsányi János Károly; May 29, 1920 – August 9, 2000) was a Hungarian-American economist and the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994. He is best known for his contributions to the ...

, 1994 Douglass C. North, 1993 Robert W. Fogel, 1993

Robert M. Solow Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; born August 23, 1924) is an American economist whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He is currently Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics at the Ma ...

, 1987

Other Nobel laureates and Prize winners connected with UNU-WIDER activities

Martti Ahtisaari Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari (; born 23 June 1937) is a Finnish politician, the tenth president of Finland (1994–2000), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and a United Nations diplomat and mediator noted for his international peace work. Ahtisa ...

(

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...

, 2008)

Edmund S. Phelps Edmund Strother Phelps (born July 26, 1933) is an American economist and the recipient of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Early in his career, he became known for his research at Yale's Cowles Foundation in the first half of ...

(2006)

James A. Mirrlees Sir James Alexander Mirrlees (5 July 1936 – 29 August 2018) was a British economist and winner of the 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was British honours system, knighted in the 1997 Birthday Honours. Early life and educa ...

(1996)

Controversy

During the late 1980s and early 1990s the press reported on various financial and organisational irregularities about UNU-WIDER and its management.

Institutional framework

Th
Council of UNU
determines the principles and policies guiding the whole university
The Board of UNU-WIDER
comprising well-known economists, policy-makers, and social scientists from all over the world, advises on research and other activities. The Director of UNU-WIDER has overall responsibility for the research and management of the Institute, and implements the research programme in keeping with guidelines set out by the Board and the Council. UNU functions as a decentralized 'network of networks' with an interdisciplinary and global perspective. The UNU system comprises the UNU Centre in Tokyo and a worldwide network of Research and Training Centres and Programmes (RTC/Ps) assisted by numerous associated and cooperating institutions.

Organization

Research is coordinated by Helsinki-based staff consisting of resident researchers and support staff. A network of external project directors, located at their universities or institutes, contribute to current projects along with several hundred network participants around the world. This group includes research staff from the

UNU ''unu'' (Romanian for "one"; lower case used on purpose) was the name of an avant-garde art and literary magazine, published in Romania from April 1928 to December 1932. Edited by writers Sașa Pană and Moldov, it was dedicated to Dada and Su ...

, UN,

ECLAC The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, known as ECLAC, UNECLAC or in Spanish and Portuguese CEPAL, is a United Nations regional commission to encourage economic cooperation. ECLAC includes 46 member States (2 ...

UNDP The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...

, the

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental organization within the United Nations Secretariat that promotes the interests of developing countries in world trade. It was established in 1964 by the ...

(UNCTAD),

UNICEF UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing Humanitarianism, humanitarian and Devel ...

and the

Bretton Woods institutions The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bret ...

including the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

and

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...

. Visiting scholars typically spend two to three months in Helsinki working on topics related to the current research programme. The internship programme allows PhD students in economics or related social sciences to spend two to three months at UNU-WIDER.

Funding

UNU-WIDER was founded with contributions from the governments of

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, the

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency ( sv, Styrelsen för internationellt utvecklingssamarbete, ) is a government agency of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Sida is responsible for organization of the bulk of Swede ...

(Sida), and the

Nippon Foundation of Tokyo, Japan, is a private, non-profit grant-making organization. It was established in 1962 by Ryoichi Sasakawa. The foundation's mission is to direct Japanese motorboat racing revenue into philanthropic activities, it uses this money t ...

(Sasakawa Foundation, Japan). Income from the endowment fund has largely covered core expenditures. Supplementary financial support for research and other activities has been received from the governments of

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...

, Finland,

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

, Sweden and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

; the

Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development The Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD) is a Kuwait-based pan-Arab development finance institution. All member-states of the Arab League are members of the AFESD. As of 2003, it held around US$7.3 billion in assets. The AFESD ...

( Kuwait),

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation The Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation is a charitable foundation whose aims are to promote Finnish research in economics and medicine and to maintain and support educational and research facilities in Finland. It was established in 1954 by the wife of Yrj� ...

(Finland),

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

(Finland),

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

SITRA Sitra ( ar, سترة or , ''As-Sitra''), also known as Sitrah ( ar, Jazīrat Sitrah, script=Latn) or Sitra Island ( ar, Jazīrat as-Sitra, script=Latn), is an island in Bahrain. It lies south of the capital, Manama, on Bahrain Island. History ; ...

(Finnish National Fund for Research and Development),

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) is part of the United Nations Secretariat and is responsible for the follow-up to major United Nations Summits and Conferences, as well as services to the United Nations Econ ...

(UN-DESA),

United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

(UNDP), and the World Bank. In-kind contributions, such as assistance in hosting workshops and conferences, are also regularly received from various universities, United Nations agencies and other international organizations.

Directors

Kunal Sen Kunala ( IAST: ) (263 BC – ?) was a son of Emperor Ashoka and Queen Padmavati and the presumptive heir to Ashoka, thus the heir to the Mauryan Empire which once ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent. After the departure of Mahendra, ...

(2019-incumbent) () *

Finn Tarp Finn Tarp (born 1951) is a Danish Professor of Development Economics at the University of Copenhagen (where he completed his MSc and PhD) and former Director of UNU-WIDER (2009-2018), Helsinki, Finland.https://www.wider.unu.edu/expert/finn-tarp F ...

(2009-2018) () *

Anthony Shorrocks Anthony F. Shorrocks is a British development economist. Academic career Between January 2001 and April 2009 he was Director of UNU-WIDER. Prior to that he was Professor at the London School of Economics and before that he worked at the Univ ...

(2001-2009) () * Matti Pohjola (2000) acting. () *

Giovanni Andrea Cornia Giovanni Andrea Cornia (born 9 April 1947), is a development economist. He is professor of economics, department of economics and management (formerly faculty of economics), at the University of Florence. He has previously been the director of the ...

(1996-1999) () * Mihály Simai (1993-1995) () *

(1985-1993) ()

Activities

Research

The Research Programme is reformulated every two years by the Institute's director in consultation with the UNU-WIDER Board following extensive discussions with UNU-WIDER research staff, leading economists in the UN and elsewhere, and donor government representatives. Research projects are led by scholars (Research Fellows and External Project Directors) who elaborate the proposals before the projects are launched. Each project typically invites selected authors to write original research papers which are later presented and discussed at project workshops and conferences. In some cases, a more general 'call for papers' may be announced on the Institute's website. Typically, two large development conferences are organized annually in Helsinki, each of which brings together around 100 individuals to present papers and to discuss current problems on development issues. Participants are usually researchers and policy makers from the academic, government, and development communities. Special attempts are made to encourage researchers from developing countries and to achieve a gender balance at these events. The research studies are published a
WIDER working papers
The outcomes also often include
policy brief
and an article in th
WIDER''Angle''

Annual lecture

The WIDER Annual Lecture is delivered by an eminent scholar who has made a significant contribution in the field of economics of development and transition. 2013

Egalitarian principles – the foundation for sustainable peace
2012

Lant Pritchett Lant Pritchett (born 1959) is an American development economist. He is the RISE Research Director at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He was born in Utah in 1959 and raised in Boise, Idaho. He graduated from Brigham You ...

Folk and the Formula: Fact and Fiction in Development
2011

Justin Yifu Lin Justin Yifu Lin (; born on October 15, 1952) is a Chinese economist and professor of economics at Peking University. He served as the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank from 2008 to 2012. He has been appointed as China St ...

From Flying Geese to Leading Dragons: New Opportunities and Strategies for Structural Transformation in Developing Countries
2010

José Antonio Ocampo José Antonio Ocampo Gaviria (born 20 December 1952) is a Colombian writer, economist and academic who was the professor of professional practice in international and public affairs and director of the Economic and Political Development Concentra ...

Reforming the International Monetary System
2009

Ronald Findlay Ronald Edsel Findlay (April 12, 1935 – October 8, 2021) was an economist and trade theorist. He was Professor of Economics at Columbia University, New York. He was born in Rangoon, Burma during British colonial rule. He has a BA from Rangoon ...

The Trade-Development Nexus in Theory and History
2009

Deepak Nayyar Deepak Nayyar (born 1946) is an Indian economist and academician. He is a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Chairperson of the Board of Governors of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) New Delhi. ...

Developing Countries in the World Economy: The Future in the Past?
2008

Kemal Derviş Kemal Derviş (; born 10 January 1949) is a Turkish economist and politician, and former head of the United Nations Development Programme. He was honored by the government of Japan for having "contributed to mainstreaming Japan's development ass ...

The Climate Change Challenge
2006

Angus Deaton Sir Angus Stewart Deaton (born 19 October 1945) is a British economist and academic. Deaton is currently a Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public ...

Global Patterns of Income and Health: Facts, Interpretations, and Policies
2005

Nancy Birdsall Nancy Birdsall (born 6 February 1946) is an American economist, the founding president of the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC, USA, and former executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank. She co-founded ...

The World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in our Global Economy
2004

Dani Rodrik Dani Rodrik (born August 14, 1957) is a Turkish economist and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was formerly the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of th ...

Rethinking Growth Strategies
2003

Kaushik Basu Kaushik Basu (born 9 January 1952) is an Indian economist who was Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2012 to 2016. He is the C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, and academic advisory ...

Global Labour Standards and Local Freedoms
2002 Jeffrey G. Williamson
Winners and Losers in Two Centuries of Globalization
2001 Frances Stewart
Horizontal Inequality: A Neglected Dimension of Development
2000 Jagdish N. Bhagwati
Globalization and Appropriate Governance
1999

A. B. Atkinson Sir Anthony Barnes Atkinson (4 September 1944 – 1 January 2017) was a British economist, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, and senior research fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. A student of James Meade, Atkinson vir ...

Is Rising Income Inequality Inevitable? A Critique of the Transatlantic Consensus
1998

More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving Toward the Post-Washington Consensus
1997 Douglass C. North
The Contribution of the New Institutional Economics to an Understanding of the Transition Problem

Other activities

UNU-WIDER and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding in the area of climate change capacity building and research. Subsequently, UNU-WIDER / AERC have jointly announced the PhD Research Internship Program, and the UNU-WIDER/AERC Visiting Scholars Programme.

Ranking

In 2010 UNU-WIDER was ranked as 7th best International Development Think Tank by the University of Pennsylvania Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program.

References

External links

United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Official Homepage

United Nations University Website

Video clips

UNU Video Portal

UNU YouTube channel

UNU Vimeo channel
{{Authority control Economic research institutes Organisations based in Helsinki Research institutes established in 1984 United Nations General Assembly subsidiary organs