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91% of sub-Saharan African workers don’t save for old age: Why that’s a problem and how to fix itLess than 10% of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa save for old age, the lowest rate for any region in the world. That implies most of the...
Less than 10% of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa save for old age, the lowest rate for any region in the world. That implies most of the...
Tax revenues and political institutions placing constraints on the executive power may reinforce each other over time and this may also bring a shift...
Effective domestic revenue mobilization has gained renewed urgency, especially in the light of the need to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In taxation debates, the ‘informal sectors’ have hitherto been assumed to be a part of the problem and...
The importance of domestic revenue mobilization and taxation for sustainable development is widely acknowledged in global development discussions, but...
About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal state capacity
Most research on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has focused on illicit outflows from developing countries and the role of non-state actors in generating IFFs. Less attention has been paid to processes and interfaces through which IFFs enter formal...
I had the privilege to participate in the UNU-WIDER Winter School as one of the lecturers. In this blog, I explain my main takeaways for students and...
Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) and taxation have gained prominence lately on the global agenda, most recently with the resolution for the United...
A few months ago, I was asked to deliver a lecture at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies on the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue...
How can Global South countries improve their tax and social protection systems? One way is to take advantage of tools that help assess the impact of...
The world has been trying to curb profit shifting to tax havens for a decade, but consistent time series evaluating the impact of these reforms have...
In May 2022, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and UNU-WIDER collaboratively launched a secure research data laboratory facility in Kampala, Uganda...
Attention on domestic resource mobilization—particularly in developing countries—has increased significantly in recent years. This stems from, among other things, recognition in the Sustainable Development Goals that further domestic funding is...
This paper contributes to the debate on domestic revenue mobilization and state-building in the Global South by asking whether there are fiscal states in sub-Saharan Africa. To answer this question, we review the diverse understandings of the fiscal...
We utilize the recently updated UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset, which covers key indicators on tax and non-tax revenues for 196 countries since the 1980s, to study the dynamics of government revenue tax collection across selected periods from...
This technical note is the third in a series based on the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset (GRD). The preceding notes have described in detail the variables contained within the GRD and the source selection procedures. In this technical note, we...
Finland aims to raise the amount of its development assistance to 0.7% of GDP, and this goal has good grounds. But how can we make sure that the...
The past four decades have seen marked improvements in the collection of domestic revenue (tax and non-tax revenues) in many countries of the Global...
How can we ensure a resilient and inclusive recovery from COVID-19? How can we hold on to the target of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, with...
How can we determine the taxation of wage earners or multinational corporations in a fair manner? Will simplifying tax administration help increase...
The socioeconomic fallout from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore discussions on domestic resource mobilization (hereafter DRM)...
This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum...
Improving tax systems is important for multiple reasons. For Kenya, finding ways to mobilize domestic revenue streams is critical to cutting the...
The Zambian government wants to reduce poverty by 20% by 2030. To make this happen, the government reformed their national cash transfer programmes...
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have become a symbol of national success and a means for global, commercial and geopolitical influence. But how well do...
ZANMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Zanzibar, was launched in November 2023. The model will aid local authorities and researchers in...
There has been a revival of interest in the state’s role in economic development. Recent research argues that the most successful economies are those where effective states provide crucial public goods and services. The historical emergence of...
With the deadline for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals just seven years away, there is an increasing sense of urgency over the...
UNU-WIDER has worked for several years in collaboration with sub-Saharan African revenue authorities to facilitate the analysis of digital tax data...
This paper explores the potential impacts of the transition to a low-carbon future for the taxation of extractive resources. The global debate on climate change has firmly moved on from the question of whether countries ought to shift towards such a...
Can tax research be inspiring? Looking back at the three years of collaboration between UNU-WIDER and the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), the answer...
The annual WIDER Development Conference held this year in Oslo concentrated on domestic revenue mobilization (DRM). The 2.5-day hybrid event...