Working Papers

Does digitalization reduce corruption? What are the benefits of data-driven digital government innovations to strengthen public integrity and advance the Sustainable Development Goals? While the correlation between digitalization and corruption is well established, there is less actionable evidence on the effects of specific digitalization reforms on different types of corruption and the policy channels through which they operate. This paper unbundles the integrity dividends of digital reforms that the pandemic has accelerated. It analyses the rise of integrity-tech and integrity analytics in the anticorruption space, deployed by data-savvy integrity institutions. It also assesses the…

How has the focus of the UN General Assembly changed over time and how well is the global agenda expressed in these documents? This paper presents a proof-of-concept classifier to examine the evolution of the global agenda expressed and observed in words of the UN General Assembly resolutions. Using natural language processing to identify four categories of resolutions — Sustainable Development, Justice and Law, Human Rights, and Peace and Security — the analysis of 3,765 UN GA resolutions from 2007 to 2019 reveals the changing areas of focus of the Member States and, as a result, of the UN Secretariat. Sustainable Development is slowly gaining importance in the language in UN…

We provide a history of past periods of rapid technological change starting from the Industrial Revolution continuing up to today. We find that it takes decades for technological breakthroughs to make a difference to the aggregate economy. The reason for this delay is that to realize the value of these breakthroughs requires complementary investments. Second, for good or for bad, government has played an important role in facilitating these transitions through both investments in physical infrastructure and legal reforms. We also emphasize that because technological breakthroughs are difficult to predict, the responses of governments are necessarily improvisational.

This paper conceptualizes recently negotiated international agreements, particularly the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as a collective roadmap to overcome challenges associated with globalization. By analyzing the effects and implications of globalization on societies and economies, the paper highlights concrete aspects of the international commitments that address globalization challenges in the three dimensions of sustainable development. Particular focus is placed on global production patterns, labor markets, poverty and inequality, global imbalances, migration and climate change. The paper concludes that, in the context of a changing political economy of globalization and…

To achieve the greatest possible human welfare, the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Climate and Regional Economics of Development (CRED) model calls for rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to keep cumulative 21st century carbon dioxide emissions below 2,000 Gt. We explain why as some other models claim very slow emission reductions are best. We make three changes to the basic assumptions of the well-known DICE model to include the most recent estimates of economic damages from climate change, express greater concern about the well-being of future generations, and expect rich countries to invest in emissions and poverty reduction in poorer countries.