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Publications (54)
Blog
Uganda, with a fiscal deficit of 5.6% in 2023, has increasingly turned to local resources to make up for its revenue shortfall since the World Bank suspended its funding on 8 August 2023 over the country’s anti-homosexuality law. In early April 2024, traders in downtown Kampala protested against...
While multinational corporations (MNCs) make up only 1.9% of firms operating in Uganda, they are overrepresented among tax holiday beneficiaries. New estimates reveal that Uganda’s revenue losses due to these tax expenditures peaked at USD 42 million in 2020.A new dataset allows for the first...
Improving tax systems is important for multiple reasons. For Kenya, finding ways to mobilize domestic revenue streams is critical to cutting the vicious cycle of indebtedness that keeps the country tied to external partners. Correct knowledge of the gaps in tax payment helps to identify solutions...
Blog
Improving early child development outcomes in low-income settings requires affordable, sustainable, and easily scalable solutions. The “First Steps” programme in Rwanda has substantial positive effects on child development and offers a blueprint for interventions seeking to improve parental...
– A closer look
Terrorist violence has a profound influence on social attitudes, including trust in governmental institutions and attitudes towards migration and civil freedoms. Acts of terrorism cause citizens to experience a complex range of negative emotions, including anxiety, anger, sorrow, and a sense of...
Blog
Fragile and least developed countries have had their development assistance cut drastically, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. For instance, net official development assistance to sub-Saharan African countries has shrunk by 7.8% compared to 2021. And...
According to a recent OECD Report, borderlands experience a greater intensity of violence, especially violence targeted against the state. While there is an expanding literature on the causes of civil conflict, we do not yet fully know why state peripheries are more prone to violence. Our research...
– Combining tax data and Google Street View images
The issue of tax non-compliance among businesses is pervasive in many developing economies, including Uganda. But to what extent do businesses comply with their tax obligations in the capital city, Kampala? Can the local environment and geographic information help predict the risk of tax non...
– How collaboration can help
UNU-WIDER has worked for several years in collaboration with sub-Saharan African revenue authorities to facilitate the analysis of digital tax data. During a visit to Kampala, Uganda this year, we asked our colleagues how this collaboration has been useful to them. How do they see their role going...
New research for UNU-WIDER explores the differences between revolutionary mass mobilizations in democracies versus dictatorships. Evidence from Lebanon and Iraq supports the argument that revolutions in democracies follow different trajectories—and may be less likely to succeed in their objectives...
Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine began in March 2014 with the annexation of Crimea, but it wasn’t until February 2022 that Russia shocked the world with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, starting Europe’s biggest war since WWII. Defeating expectations that Russian military forces would...
– The role of partnerships
When the theme for the first WIDER Development Conference of 2022—peace, security, and conflict—was chosen some years ago, no one could have predicted how close to home the topic would be. As we welcomed our conference guests to Helsinki on that day, everyone’s thoughts were with our Ukrainian...
Blog
UK economic forecasts have improved markedly since the September 2022 mini-budget. The economic recession may now be more shallow and public borrowing lower than previously expected. However, faced with persistently high inflation and continued uncertainty caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine...
Zambia is putting in place fiscal measures to improve the efficient collection of domestic revenue to finance social and public infrastructure. This analysis shows how much more revenue can be accumulated if tax evasion was at the bare minimum. Tax gap describes the share of the potential tax...
Along with several other African countries, Zambia has introduced a withholding system for value-added tax (VAT) to improve revenue collection and compliance. Even though VAT withholding policies are applied in several countries in Africa and similar industry-specific policies in Europe, empirical...
Displaying 16 of 54 results