Yuen Yuen Ang argues, in this expert commentary prepared for the UNDP Development at Risk Report (2025), that the current period of global disruption should be understood not primarily as polycrisis but as polytunity — a generational opening for deep intellectual and institutional transformation that those attached to the old order are ill-positioned to see. The root of today's overlapping crises, Ang argues, is the industrial-colonial paradigm: the worldview that has governed political-economic thinking since mass industrialization, combining mechanical assumptions — the search for "the button that starts the machine," in Duflo and Banerjee's phrase — with a colonial logic of assimilation that positions the West as the universal endpoint of development. Translated into practice, this paradigm drives a persistent and persistently unsuccessful search for the single cause, silver bullet, or copy-and-paste template that will unlock growth. AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral) Political Economy is Ang's response. AIM rests on two distinctive features: first, it recognizes that social systems are complex, not complicated — and that the task is to illuminate the order within complexity rather than to simplify it away. Second, it shifts development's focus from emulating an idealized Western standard to amplifying the adaptive, innovative capacity of actors in the developing world, expressed in the principle of "using what you have": building on local knowledge and existing resources rather than importing foreign blueprints. A paradigm, Ang argues, is not a theory or a framework — it is an operating system. Change the OS and all the applications must change with it. Advancing such a shift is a public good that UNDP is uniquely positioned to lead.
Climate-induced mobility in African cities is often portrayed as a rational adaptive response to environmental stress, a framing that obscures the gendered, spatial, and institutional forces shaping who moves, who stays, and who is left behind. Using feminist and participatory methods, this study examines women's experiences in four climate-vulnerable informal settlements in Accra: Agbogbloshie, Chorkor, Glefe, and Odawna. Insights from gender-segregated focus group discussions and key informant interviews reveal that adaptation emerges not from formal planning but through everyday labour, including carrying children through floodwaters, elevating belongings, and maintaining networks of mutual care. Despite being central to household and community resilience, women's work remains largely invisible to planners. Mobility is seldom protective, while immobility shaped by poverty, caregiving roles, and insecure tenure can heighten risk. Institutional responses remain fragmented and gender-blind, highlighting the need for urban climate governance grounded in feminist ethics and local knowledge.
Gender disparities in access to productive assets remain a defining feature of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. While gender gaps in crop productivity are well documented, evidence on livestock productivity remains limited. This paper examines gender differences in livestock productivity across eight WAEMU countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, C & ocirc;te d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo - using two rounds of EHCVM data. To address selection bias associated with social norms, we combine regression analysis with entropy balancing. Results reveal a persistent productivity gap, with male livestock owners outperforming females. Recentered Influence Function (RIF) decomposition shows that unequal productive endowments largely explain this disparity. Policies enhancing women's access to livestock inputs, services, and finance are essential for promoting gender equity and rural productivity growth.
The manufacturing sector plays a crucial role in industrial development, innovation and the labour market of an economy. A negative exogenous shock affecting this sector can have significant consequences on a country's economic growth. In this article, we examine the impact of terrorist attacks on manufacturing productivity in a panel of 216 countries between 1970 and 2020. Using mediation models, our results highlight several mechanisms of influence. By affecting key economic factors such as foreign investments, skilled labour migration, supply chain disruptions, and rising security costs, terrorist attacks hinder manufacturing productivity. However, these effects may vary depending on the target of the attack (civilian or state) and the country's level of economic development.
Despite growing policy interest in financial tools to support rural households, little is known about which products are most effective, particularly for women. Using a randomized experiment in Burkina Faso and Senegal, we assess gender differences in the take-up and impacts of index-based agricultural insurance and commitment savings. Women are less likely to purchase insurance and more likely to invest in emergency savings. Insurance improves agricultural input use for both genders but has weaker impacts for women due to lower take-up - likely linked to higher basis risk. Savings products labeled for agricultural investment boost men's outcomes but more strongly restrict women's consumption than emergency-labeled savings. These findings suggest that gender gaps in financial product impacts stem from differences in both access and constraints, underscoring the need for gender-sensitive design. We recommend testing hybrid instruments that jointly address risks related to weather, health, and caregiving to enhance inclusion and effectiveness.
Persons with disabilities are more likely to be excluded from employment than those without disabilities, yet little is known about effective strategies to address this gap globally. This study is a process evaluation of a disability-inclusive employment programme STAR+, conducted in Bangladesh alongside a cluster randomised controlled trial. The intervention comprised a six-month apprenticeship for youth with disabilities to develop trade-specific skills, alongside additional disability-inclusive components such as workplace modifications. Using qualitative data from participants and implementers, triangulated with trial endline data and programme documentation, the study examines intervention mechanisms of impact and contextual factors. Findings highlight the acquisition of practical and soft skills (e.g., self-confidence) as key positive mechanisms. However, entry into waged employment was constrained by structural barriers, family resistance, and broader disability- and gender-related stigma. Overall, findings show that STAR+ was successful as a skill development programme but identify barriers to improved waged employment outcomes.
The economic and social consequences of the shadow economy proliferation have been well documented, yet its reduction remains a major challenge in developing countries. This paper empirically examines the effect of country stability on informality. Empirical results resilient to a set of robustness checks consistently show that improving country stability is a necessary condition for reducing informality. Through mediation analysis, financial development, globalisation, and human capital are identified as key channels through which country stability contributes to informality reduction in developing countries. These findings carry important implications for policymakers, inviting them to strengthen national and regional initiatives aimed at guaranteeing country stability and reducing informality. To achieve this, it is essential to prioritise human capital development, build a more efficient financial system, and foster greater globalisation, as these represent the most effective levers for tackling informality in developing economies.
This qualitative study explores how Indigenous Knowledge (IK) can be integrated into inclusive education for students with disabilities in North Wollo, Ethiopia. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and document analysis with 44 participants, the research finds that while IK holds great potential to enhance learning outcomes, its integration is blocked by systemic barriers. Specifically, unclear national policies, a Eurocentric curriculum that silences local knowledge, and teachers who lack training and confidence in IK-based methods all hinder progress. On the other hand, successful practices have emerged, including community engagement, culturally responsive pedagogies, Indigenous psychosocial care, and mother-tongue instruction. As a result, these approaches boost students' participation, sense of belonging, self-esteem, and overall well-being. Finally, this paper offers practical recommendations to reshape learning environments, affirm cultural identity, advance genuine inclusion, and achieve epistemic justice for students with disabilities.
Many countries have implemented policies designed to mitigate group-based or horizontal inequalities, with affirmative action programs being the most prominent examples. However, research examining the extent and motivations behind public support for such redistribution policies outside the United States remains limited. This study addresses this gap by investigating attitudes toward affirmative action in Nigeria - a nation characterised by pronounced political and economic disparities across ethnic groups and regions. Affirmative action in Nigeria is institutionalised through the Federal Character Principle (FCP) and operationally administered by the Federal Character Commission (FCC). Utilising original survey data from over 2000 Nigerian respondents, this paper analyses support for the FCP and FCC, as well as its underlying drivers. Our findings reveal that perceived societal benefits, especially the maintenance of political stability and the alleviation of ethnic inequalities, constitute significantly more influential factors shaping public endorsement of affirmative action than potential individual or group-level material gains.
This study investigates the gender-specific short-term impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown policy on labor market outcomes enforced in the Philippines in April 2020. More specifically, we employ the triple difference estimator, focusing on the ex-ante and ex-post differences between men and women working in areas subjected to Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) and those who do not. The findings indicate that the lockdown policy had a more detrimental impact on male workers than on females, partly attributed to the higher number of men engaged in sectors forced to suspend operations due to the lockdown measures. Additionally, the study identified significant variations across demographic groups regarding age, educational attainment, and the number of children. The insights gathered can help policymakers create targeted interventions to lessen the gender-specific impacts of economic downturns.
In developing countries, governments are rightly concerned with generating enough jobs. However, focusing solely on the quantity delivers a partial picture, as socioeconomic sustainability and productivity also depend on job quality. This paper shows that although Egypt has experienced reasonable economic growth between 1998 and 2018, labour force participation declined and job quality appears to have worsened. Based on several Latin American case studies, this paper uses the Alkire/Foster method to measure poor-quality employment among wage-earners in Egypt. Using cross-sectional data from the Egyptian Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), this paper contributes by (1) showing that this methodology can be applied to a lower-income country; (2) quantifying the proportion of deprived wage-earners and the clustering of their deprivations; (3) discussing that the 2003 labour reform likely had adverse effects on poor-quality of employment. The methodology, results and findings are relevant to other developing countries around the world.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 80 million people live with a disability, and they are more likely to experience poverty and exclusion from development efforts. This article examines whether people with disabilities are at higher risk of chronic poverty in Peru, Chile, and Colombia. Using the method proposed by Bolch et al. (2023), we estimate the probability of chronic poverty by analysing the interaction between income poverty and multidimensional poverty. We use data from CASEN 2022 (Chile), ECV 2022 (Colombia), and ENAHO 2022 (Peru), applying a biprobit model to estimate the likelihood of experiencing income poverty, multidimensional poverty, or both simultaneously. Across all three countries, households with members with disabilities show higher levels of multidimensional poverty. In Chile, no significant differences were found in income poverty. Overall, households with members with disabilities are significantly more likely to experience chronic poverty than those without.
Integrating both quantitative and qualitative data, this paper contributes to the literature on attitude-behaviour relationship by examining the influence of debt attitudes on the debt behaviours of rural poor households in Kerala, India. Data suggests that debt attitudes within this demographic can be better characterised as general and circumstantial attitudes. Surveying 720 households, the quantitative analysis reveals a significant association between the general debt attitudes of the household's primary financial decision-maker and the likelihood of the household having an outstanding loan. However, debt attitudes do not predict the total amount of household debt. Analysing 21 interviews, three explanations for this attitude-behaviour disconnect emerged: the inescapable inevitability of borrowing, the dynamic nature of debt attitudes, and debt recycling practices. The paper argues that individualistic/dispositional factors alone cannot address excessive indebtedness without addressing underlying socioeconomic disadvantages. It calls for comprehensive policy reforms targeting the root structural causes of financial vulnerability.
This manuscript investigates the real estate sector in Santiago, Chile, examining how the distribution of value in residential construction projects reflects and reinforces labour market inequalities. Utilizing the Marx Ratio, the study measures the surplus value extracted from workers, providing a quantitative framework to explore the dynamics of value extraction and its effects on workers across twenty-eight projects. By analysing these patterns, the research offers insights into broader economic and social disparities within urban economic frameworks. The findings contribute to understanding the complex interactions between capital and labour and suggest pathways towards more equitable distribution mechanisms. Additionally, the study highlights how real estate investment and labour practices perpetuate or could potentially alleviate urban inequalities.
Agricultural technological progress is often viewed as a technical solution to productivity constraints, but its broader socio-economic implications remain underexplored. This study investigates the gendered impact of mechanization on labor allocation and women's well-being in rural China. Using nationally representative data from Chinese micro-farmers, we find that mechanization reduces agricultural labor time for both men and women. However, only men benefit from increased non-agricultural employment opportunities, while women remain largely excluded. Despite this asymmetry, mechanization significantly improves women's subjective well-being - measured by life satisfaction, leisure time, and household decision-making power - especially among those with higher relative incomes. These findings suggest that mechanization operates not merely as a production tool, but as a socially transformative force - challenging entrenched gender norms and shifting the power dynamics within rural families. We argue that the technological modernization of agriculture holds profound implications for gender equity and rural social change.
The polycrisis marks a moment of global disruption, but it also opens a rare opportunity for intellectual transformation - what Yuen Yuen Ang calls polytunity. This essay introduces AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral) Political Economy as a paradigm designed for a disrupted, multipolar world. AIM replaces the industrial-colonial worldview that has long shaped political economy, challenging its mechanical assumptions, Eurocentric benchmarks, and claims of neutrality. AIM did not emerge recently; its core ideas and applications were already present in Ang's earlier books, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China's Gilded Age (2020), but misclassified due to structural erasure that confine non-Western scholarship to the realm of "exceptional cases." Drawing on How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Ang demonstrates AIM in action: development as a coevolutionary process in complex economic systems, and meta-institutions as higher-order designs that enable state-market coevolution. The essay concludes by situating AIM as a generative research paradigm - one whose roots lie in past work and whose canopy extends across ongoing projects in comparative corruption, fiscal capacity, and policy communication. AIM not only offers a compass for the current age of disruption, it extends an invitation to collectively build a more adaptive, pluralistic, and reflexive political economy.
We examine the relationship between the use of period products and reproductive tract infections utilizing the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) for India. To address endogeneity concerns in an OLS approach, we employ an instrumental variable strategy that exploits exogenous variation in women's average exposure to television in neighbouring households. Conditional on a comprehensive set of controls, we find that the use of period products reduces the likelihood of contracting any RTI by 16 percentage points. Our findings are robust to alternative specifications, sample restrictions, and the inclusion of additional covariates. We further assess the sensitivity of our estimates by allowing the instrument to be plausibly exogenous, thereby relaxing the strict exclusion restriction. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that while the effects are broadly consistent across caste, class, and wealth groups, rural women and those aged 20-24 remain key populations requiring targeted informational and policy interventions.
