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Publications (25)
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– Comment on 'Redistribution, inequality, and growth: new evidence'
An influential paper by Berg et al., ‘Redistribution, inequality, and growth: new evidence’, uses the SWIID data to examine the impact of inequality and redistribution on growth in both developing and developed countries. It finds that while inequality is harmful for growth, redistribution does not...
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In this paper, we use the World Income Inequality Database to assess the main trends in inequality within countries since around 1990. We cope with the heterogeneity in the original information (regarding the measure of resources, equivalence scale, etc.) by focusing on the trends rather than on the...
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– An integrated approach
In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research...
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– Accounting for inequality changes in Spain during the recession
I discuss a new approach which decomposes inequality into the contributions of population groups by income sources. I estimate a matrix with rows and columns which indicate different population groups and income sources respectively, with each element indicating the marginal change in the inequality...
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Fiscal policy measures are a key means by which governments can influence distribution and poverty, but in fact the relationships between fiscal policy and poverty are not well understood. The most commonly used technique for assessing the distributional impact, benefit incidence analysis, is...
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After more than a decade of economic decline and civil war, Uganda was able to return to economic growth thanks to the policies pursued by Museveni’s National Resistance Movement which elicited considerable donor support. They include macroeconomic reforms, public sector restructuring, privatisation...
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– The Case of Food Subsidies in India
This paper investigates the effect of a food subsidy programme in India on child malnutrition by addressing the following linked questions using household survey data that includes information on usage of the public distribution system. First, does the food subsidy induce higher expenditures on food...
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This study tests the performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Burkina Faso using indicators such as the sustainable interest rate and the subsidy dependence index. The results indicate that MFIs outreach performance remains very low compared with potential demand, and the factors...
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This paper investigates the correlates of household welfare in urban Ethiopia with an emphasis on the impact of education. We use household panel data collected between 1994 and 1997. Welfare is approximated by household income. Although non-educated households are found in all income quintiles...
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– Experience from ASIP in Zambia
Sector investment programmes have become a common tool in development assistance. However, their contribution to national growth of production and poverty reduction has been less investigated. The sector investments can be seen as a part of national fiscal policy, but, when run poorly, they can...
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The present paper critically examines how aid dependent low-income countries have approached the process of public expenditure management reform during the 1990s. It begins with an overview of broader public sector reform initiatives in LDCs which provide the backdrop against which expenditure...
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To finance basic pro-poor services, the Government of Ghana must mobilize more public revenue. But tax reform has been highly controversial in Ghana. An attempt to introduce VAT in 1995 failed after widespread protests. Although a second attempt to introduce VAT in 1998 succeeded, strong resistance...
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The paper examines two issues associated with aid and fiscal policy. First, how best the conditionality behind foreign aid, sometimes non-economic, is complied with in a principal-agent framework. In a multiple task and multiple principal framework, principals are better off cooperating and making...
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This paper assesses recent theorising and empirical evidence on the impact of fiscal policy—taxes, public expenditures and budget deficits—on long-run growth. It considers the relevance of recent advances in growth theory for low-income countries and compares the evidence for low-income countries...
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This paper discusses the design of tax systems in developing countries, with particular emphasis on low-income countries. It outlines the directions of reform that many low-income countries have followed, often on the advice of the IMF or the World Bank, and considers whether they are justified in...
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Tanzania has during the past years made substantial progress in stabilising the economy. One of the major issues has been to cut down on government activities and there has been a remarkable contraction. Although tax reform has been an important component in Tanzania’s economic reform programme the...
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