Andy Sumner
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Structural transformation and regional inequality differential in Indonesia Open
Indonesia is one of the world's largest developing countries, as evidenced by its position as the fourth most populous nation and its status as an archipelago. Each island and province has unique endowment factors, making national-level st…
In Search of a Plan B: Like‐Minded Internationalism and the Future of Global Development Open
The international landscape in mid‐2025 is characterized by a retreat from liberal institutionalism, exemplified by the United States' withdrawal from the Sustainable Development Goals and its adoption of transactional, power‐based interna…
Education expansion, the Kuznetsian tension, and inequality: The case of Indonesia Open
This paper explores the impact of education expansion on structural transformation and income inequality in Indonesia, contextualized within the Kuznetsian framework of economic development. Using a natural policy experiment from the 1978-…
Middle‐income Trap or Neoliberal Trap? Industrial Policy and Ideology in the <i>World Development Report 2024</i> Open
The idea that there is a ‘middle-income trap’ (MIT) has become generally accepted in development policy discussions despite criticisms of the concept, the multiple definitions, and concerns about the empirical evidence regarding whether su…
Kuznets at 70: the enduring significance of a curve and a hypothesis Open
Seven decades ago, Simon Kuznets put forward the hypothesis that as economies developed, national inequality would first increase and then decrease-an inverted U-shape. He provided preliminary evidence for the hypothesis on the basis of th…
Linkage development as industrial policy: The state and structural transformation in resource-rich countries Open
This paper examines Indonesia's upgrading within the global nickel value chain. Indonesia's transformation from a major nickel ore exporter into an integrated producer of refined nickel products offers important lessons for resource-rich d…
Will the poverty‐related <span>UN</span> Sustainable Development Goals be met? New projections Open
In this paper, we discuss the literature and consider the historical relationship between growth and a set of poverty‐related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mort…
New estimates of the cost of ending poverty and its global distribution Open
This paper makes new estimates of the cost of ending poverty and the global distribution of both the cost and poverty itself. First, the paper discusses definitions of 'ending' poverty, arguing that there is an overemphasis (e.g. SDG 1) on…
Unity in Diversity? Reflections on Development Studies in the Mid-2020s Open
Development Studies (DS) demonstrates maturity as a field of inquiry marked by the half-century anniversaries of journals, institutes, and scholarly associations of DS. There is vitality in terms of the volume of research and the buoyant n…
Is the era of declining global income inequality over? Open
This paper examines the trajectory of global income inequality since 1981. Commonly used (relative) definitions indicate a decline in global inequality since the late 1980s. Looking ahead, it has been intuited that the influence of China's…
Will economic growth be sufficient to end global poverty? New projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Open
In this paper, we present new projections for a range of global poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically, extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality, and access to clea…
Great Gatsby and the Global South Open
In the Global South economic mobility across generations or intergenerational economic mobility is in and of itself an important topic for research with consequences for policy. It concerns the 'stickiness' or otherwise of inequality becau…
The global inequality boomerang Open
In this paper we argue that the decline in global inequality over the last decades has spurred a ‘sunshine’ narrative of falling global inequality that has been rather oversold, in the sense, we argue, it is likely to be temporary. We argu…
Whose intergenerational mobility? A new set of estimates for Indonesia by gender, geography, and generation Open
Various scholars have estimated levels of intergenerational mobility in OECD countries. Fewer estimates are available for developing countries, where mobility arguably matters more due to starker differences in living standards. This paper…
Measuring global poverty before and during the pandemic: a political economy of overoptimism Open
The contribution of this paper is to question the ‘official’ estimates of global monetary poverty up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue there is a political economy of overoptimism in the measurement of global poverty. Specifica…
The End of Global Poverty: Is the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1 (Still) Achievable? Open
This paper asks whether the UN Sustainable Development Goal to end poverty is achievable in the aftermath of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We discuss various estimates of the poverty impact of the pandemic. We then differentiate growth‐poverty‐in…
A direct test of Kuznets in a developing economy: a cross-district analysis of structural transformation and inequality in Indonesia Open
This paper empirically tests the Kuznets hypothesis that structural transformation–the movement of labour from low productivity to higher productivity sectors–is associated with rising inequality in a developing economy. We assemble a uniq…
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A Proposal for a New Universal Development Commitment Open
Most developed countries have accepted, in principle at least, the 50‐year‐old commitment of contributing 0.7 per cent of gross national income to supporting the development of developing countries. But what if all countries made a univers…
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Data for: Who are the World's Poor? A New Profile of Global Multidimensional Poverty Open
This dataset provides headcount estimates of poverty using 5 indices of multidimensional poverty.
Double Dividends and Mixed Blessings: Structural Transformation, Income Inequality and Employment Dynamics Open
This paper provides an introduction to a special section on structural transformation, income inequality and employment dynamics. The set of papers in the special section in different ways revisit the seminal works of Lewis, Kuznets and Ka…
Structural transformation and inclusive growth: Kuznets’ ‘developer’s dilemma’ in Indonesia Open
We focus on special characteristics of the manufacturing sector, in terms of employment generation and productivity growth, that enable the rapid, resilient economic catch-up of developing countries. We consider the 'developer's dilemma' a…
Estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty Open
In this paper we make estimates of the potential short-term economic impact of COVID-19 on global monetary poverty through contractions in per capita household income or consumption. Our estimates are based on three scenarios: low, medium,…
Deindustrialization and Tertiarization in the Developing World Open
This chapter outlines the contours of contemporary structural change and economic development along the following lines: in all developing regions agriculture shares of GDP and employment have fallen substantially—albeit they still persist…