A large informal sector is a challenge for developing countries building up social protection systems. Expanding social safety nets reduces poverty, but financing them can increase the tax burden, potentially reducing availability of formal sector...
The aim of this paper is to explore the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits in Ecuador using two different approaches: direct use of reported taxes and benefits in household survey data, and use of simulated taxes and benefits obtained from...
View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. The report describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of...
This note describes how the counterfactual datasets in the working paper by Lastunen et al. (2021) have been reweighted, for each country analysed, to the ‘pre-crisis’ time point of 31 March 2020. The procedure consists of five main steps. The note...
This technical note presents a modelling approach used in Lastunen et al. (2021) where tax and benefit policies are scaled to reflect their actual duration during a single calendar year. It can be applied to tax-benefit microsimulation models...
Although the effect of fiscal drag is well studied in the industrialized world, empirical evidence from developing economies remains limited. Against this backdrop, this study aims to explore the effect of fiscal drag on income distribution and work...
In this paper we explore South Africa’s personal income tax system using two microsimulation models. The first, SAMOD, simulates personal income tax and social benefits using a dataset derived from the nationally representative National Income...
Redistributive systems in Africa are still in their infancy but are expanding in order to finance increasing public spending. This study aims at characterising the redistributive potential of six African countries: Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania...
Agricultural subsidies may have significant productive and distributional consequences, and policy-makers need to be able to assess these impacts as a part of the overall tax and benefit policy. Microsimulation models offer a tool for such analysis...
This paper assesses the feasibility of developing a tax and benefit microsimulation model in Rwanda. Tax-benefit microsimulation can be used to explore ways in which national development goals can be achieved in a cost-effective manner, and to assess...
Tanzania has expanded its social protection framework significantly over the past decade, but the country continues to grapple with important gender inequalities. This paper examines, first, the evolution and effects of Tanzania’s social protection...
By combining household survey data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic with detailed tax-benefit simulations, this paper quantifies the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax-benefit policies in mitigating the immediate...
View the latest VNMOD country report here. This report documents VNMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Viet Nam. This work has been carried out by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) in collaboration with UNU-WIDER and SASPRI. The...
This note, with emphasis on VAT and excise taxes, illustrates how indirect taxes are modelled in the context of GHAMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ghana. GHAMOD is similar to the EUROMOD base platform, and its built-in Statistics...
View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these...
This technical note has been produced alongside a WIDER working paper assessing the effects on income inequality and income tax simulations of adjusting top incomes of employees in survey data based on administrative tax records in Ecuador. The paper...
This note has been produced alongside a WIDER working paper assessing the effect of the Unemployment Insurance benefit on income protection in Ecuador. The aim of this note is to describe the methodology used to assess the effect of the Unemployment...
This paper calculates automatic stabilization in Ghana, South Africa, and Ecuador to explain income cushioning amid income and demand shocks. Fiscal policies within these countries are also stress tested to gauge welfare contingencies and insurance...
This study evaluates which type of benefit—a universal benefit, a proxy mean-tested benefit, or a categorical benefit— better cushions the poverty effects of income shocks in a developing economy. We compare the effectiveness of the three benefit...
This report documents PERUMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Peru. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on which...
This report documents BOLMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Bolivia. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on which...
This report documents COLMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Colombia. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on...
Establishing an equitable and efficient tax system is essential for reducing poverty, combating inequality, and fostering sustainable economic growth. Rwanda’s government has recognized this and implemented significant changes to the personal income...
SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation models may in some cases oversimulate taxes or benefits, generating greater expenditure, a greater number of beneficiaries, or greater amounts of taxes or taxpayers than reported in administrative data. Drawing on...
This report documents RWAMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Rwanda. It describes the different tax-benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model picks up these different provisions, and the database on which the model runs. It concludes...
This report documents VNMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Viet Nam. This work has been carried out by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) in collaboration with UNU-WIDER and SASPRI. The results presented in this report are...
This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on...
This paper makes use of tax–benefit microsimulation techniques to quantify the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax–benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks. Our results show a dramatic...
This study analyses the impacts of indirect tax benefits policy reforms on income distribution and poverty in Tanzania by applying a standard static microsimulation model TAZMOD v1.8. The simulations model two indirect tax reforms involving changes...
Household incomes in Ecuador were badly hit by the pandemic, despite the government’s emergency grant to families. H Xavier Jara Tamayo (University of...
The distributional analysis of consumption taxes is useful for establishing the welfare impact of tax policy. This paper uses the UGAMOD microsimulation model to establish the tax incidence and welfare impact of excise duty in Uganda. The results...
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