Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (16)
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A bridge between micro and macro estimates?
The Nordic model relies on high tax rates to finance an extensive welfare state. If labour supply elasticities are large, the burden of financing the model can be large even if, arguably, the practice of providing subsidised goods that support labour supply is likely to mitigate these effects. We...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A counter-argument to the recommendation in the Mirrlees Review
The Mirrlees Review recommends that commodity taxation should in general be uniform, but with some goods consumed in conjunction with labour supply (such as child care) left untaxed. This article examines the validity of this claim in an optimal income tax framework. Contrary to the recommendation...
This paper examines the effects of health-oriented food tax reforms on the distribution of tax payments, food demand and health outcomes. We offer an illustration of how one can take into account the uncertainty related to both demand estimation and health estimates and to produce confidence...
– An Empirical Analysis
The theoretical analysis of optimal commodity taxation is advanced, but there is only limited empirical evidence to guide commodity tax policies. With this paper, we contribute to this body of literature by empirically examining, using Finnish consumption data, the relation between working hours...
Blog
23 April 2014 Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang At the onset of its miraculous rise in 1979, China had been trapped in poverty for centuries and was poorer than most sub-Saharan African countries. Thanks to the right strategies for transformation, China achieved an average annual growth rate of 9.8 per...
A considerable amount of recent work in political science and economics builds from the hypothesis that ethnic heterogeneity leads to poor provision of public goods, a key component of poor governance. Much of this work cites Alesina, Baqir and Easterly (1999) as providing empirical proof. This...
– an Exploratory Analysis
This article explores how ethnic politics may operate differently in societies with “ranked” versus “unranked” ethnic systems, where ethnicity and class correlate closely versus very little. It focuses on two hypotheses suggested, but not tested, in Donald Horowitz's Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Their...
Blog
– Mobility and Vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean
Luis-Felipe Lopez-Calva [1] The concept of social class and specifically middle class, has been widely discussed in sociology and other social sciences, but mostly ignored in modern economics. In practice, the middle class has been defined in terms of income, consumption patterns, occupational...
– Comparative Path Analysis for Mozambique and Vietnam
While economic growth generally reduces income poverty, there are pronounced differences in the strength of this relationship across countries. Typical explanations for this variation include measurement errors in growth–poverty accounting and different compositions of economic growth. We explore...
Blog
– Can Microcredit Close the Deal?
M.G. Quibria In the wake of the worst famine of Bangladesh of the post-World War era Professor Muhammad Yunus launched a microcredit experiment in 1976 to assist a group of poor, highly indebted households, in Chittagong, Bangladesh. This experiment, which was to later emerge as the Grameen Bank...
– the Case of Mozambique
We provide a comprehensive approach for analyzing the evolution of poverty using Mozambique as a case study. Bringing together data from disparate sources, we develop a novel 'back-casting' framework that links a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to a micro-simulation poverty module. This...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around each crisis, and actions by the government to...
Blog
– Mozambique and Vietnam Compared
Channing Arndt, Andres Garcia, Finn Tarp, and James Thurlow Economic growth typically reduces poverty, but global averages conceal wide variation at the country-level, where even rapid growth may not significantly improve the incomes of the poor. In some of sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest growing...
Economic growth in Vietnam was resilient to the global commodity and financial crises, but it is unclear why. Impacts on employment and poverty are also disputed. We develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to decompose growth and distributional outcomes. Results indicate that the 2008...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Turnout, partisanship and protest
The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Yet, despite their numerical importance and the historical relevance of generational identities within the region, very little is really known about the political participation of Africa’s youth. In order...
Blog
Luc Christiaensen Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER At the G8 July summit in Aquila, Italy, US$ 20 billion was pledged to support farmers in poorer countries. Is the world getting serious about food security? To be sure, while growing water shortages and climate change pose important challenges...
Displaying 16 of 16 results