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Publications (86)
Working Paper
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– Comparing the performance of universal basic income in Uganda and Zambia during COVID-19
The debate over universal basic income (UBI) has gained traction in the developing world in recent years. We analyse the effects of four UBI schemes on poverty and inequality measures during normal times and times of crisis in Uganda and Zambia. We use static microsimulation models and nationally...
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This paper explores two policy interventions in Zambia, a minimum wage hike in 2018 and an upward revision in the first kink in the progressive income tax schedule in 2017, to examine and compare the impact of minimum wage and tax kink changes on wages and the earnings distribution in the formal and...
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– Simulation results for Zambia
The COVID-19 pandemic increased public debt and changed the income distribution in many countries. We use a numerical simulation approach to derive optimal nonlinear marginal tax rates for the pre-crisis and crisis periods. We contribute to the literature by examining optimal tax rates numerically...
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– Evidence from Zambian tax administrative data
We investigate the behavioural responses of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates applying empirical bunching methodology to tax administrative data from Zambia over the period from 2014 to 2021. We find evidence for excess bunching at the first kink in the tax...
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– A comparative perspective
We examine the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated tax-benefit measures in seven sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on the onset of the crisis.We evaluate impacts on disposable incomes, considering variations across income groups; assess the effectiveness of tax...
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– A bottom-up approach based on audit assessments
Assessing tax gaps—the difference between the potential and actual taxes raised—plays a vital role in achieving positive domestic revenue objectives through improved and reformed taxation. This is particularly pertinent for growth outcomes in developing countries. This study uses a bottom-up...
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Improving tax collection is essential if developing economies are to avoid over-reliance on external donor funds and loans. Revenue authorities in the Global South have recently adopted new policy tools to improve domestic revenue mobilization through taxes.One such new policy is a withholding...
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We study the effectiveness of social protection benefits in reducing income and consumption poverty in five sub-Saharan African countries—Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia—in normal times and times of widespread economic crisis. Using tax–benefit microsimulation models with...
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– A microsimulation approach
This paper examines the distributional impacts of agricultural policies versus those of cash transfers using a tax–benefit microsimulation model for Zambia for the policy year 2020. The analysis also considers the behavioural impacts of input subsidies and social cash transfers. The results indicate...
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– Insights from survey and tax administrative data in Zambia
This paper examines how formal firms have been impacted by and recovered from the pandemic by drawing on two distinct but complementary data sources. This is the first attempt to use both survey and tax administrative data to measure the initial decline and subsequent recovery of firm sales and...
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– Policy options for a sustainable fiscal regime
Zambia has changed its mineral tax regime repeatedly during the past decades in a bid to raise mineral revenue, but with only modest success. This paper looks at what the country needs to do to create a mining fiscal regime that could sustain operations, boost output, and raise revenues without...
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– Simulating potential Cash Plus reforms using MicroZAMOD
A large share of the population in Zambia is living below the national poverty line. To reduce poverty, in 2019, the government initiated the Cash Plus reform, which aims to build on the existing Social Cash Transfer as a floor benefit with additional benefits to take account of the...
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This paper analyses the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in 2020 in a cross-country comparative perspective for five African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We first estimate the impact of the crisis on disposable incomes...
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– Receiving more, expecting less?
Are candidates who hand out clientelistic goods at election time less likely to provide services once they take office? This paper examines the poor’s expectations of future service provision by candidates who hand out money and other goods versus those who do not. We hypothesize that the poor’s...
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– Imputing employment income in Tanzania and Zambia
The quality of data on employment income is explored using Tanzanian and Zambian household survey datasets. The extent of missing and implausible income data is assessed and four different methods are applied to impute missing or implausible values. The four imputation methods are also applied to...
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– The case of Zambia and South Africa
The successful use of special economic zones as economic tools for export-led industrial development in East Asia propelled a wave of similar initiatives across Africa. In Southern Africa, Zambia and South Africa instituted special economic zones in their respective legal and institutional...
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Low levels of broadband penetration combined with poor quality of services present a challenge to growth and development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This paper performs a comparative analysis of the competitive dynamics of telecommunications markets in four SADC countries...
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– Is success influenced by design attributes?
Special economic zones (SEZs) in Africa are generally regarded as underperforming relative to their peers in the rest of the world. This study focuses on the design features of the SEZ in Africa that may help explain this underperformance. Literature was reviewed to identify the key design...
From the book:
Mining for Change
Working Paper
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– A case study of the maize-milling machinery value chain in South Africa and Zambia
This working paper is the fourth in a series that forms part of the project ‘Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development’, a three-year partnership between UNU-WIDER and the South African government aimed at generating a better understanding of regional value chains and supporting...
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Bioenergy in Southern Africa
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Bioenergy in Southern Africa
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Bioenergy in Southern Africa
Working Paper
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– A tax benefit microsimulation analysis based on MicroZAMOD
This paper assesses the effects on poverty and inequality of the alternative targeting approaches that Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer programme could take as its expansion continues during the period of the country’s Seventh National Development Plan (2017–21). It further assesses the domestic...
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The construction sector plays a critical role in delivering quality infrastructure, which in turn influences the use of natural resource revenues towards achieving structural change and industrial development. We use industrial organization and political economy lenses to describe and understand the...
Working Paper
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This paper is about understanding the cycle of global copper price booms and busts over Zambia’s economic history. We explore how the mining industry has been managed, and wider economic management during boom periods. We find that successive Zambian governments did not use copper revenues to...
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Female Autonomy and Women’s Welfare
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– Local content in Zambia—a faltering experience?
This paper traces the role of local content in Zambia’s mining sector in supporting industrialization and economic diversification. It assesses productive linkages and manufacturing competitiveness during import-substitution industrialization and post-1991 liberalization and privatization, and the...
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.
– Domestic policies, corporate strategies and regional dynamics
Part of Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
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.
– Corporate strategies, investments and agro-industrial policies
Part of Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Regional Growth Opportunities
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
This issue contains seven articles addressing the major changes underway in the integration of economies in southern Africa. This special issue is based on the UNU-WIDER project 'Regional growth and development in Southern Africa'. This project aims to develop, in conjunction with important research...
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In 2008, the Government of Zambia reformed its mining tax regime for large-scale copper mines through a unilateral legislative change. The country went from having one of the lowest average effective tax rates and government take to be above the average. We focus on a particularly controversial...
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– The possibilities and the realities
The paper discusses the practical possibilities of achieving increased downstream processing and the policies that are commonly used for this purpose. It reviews the reasons why forward vertical integration is not always an optimal choice for extractive industry companies. It finds little support...
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In this paper, we examine the impact of soil conservation adoption on gender-specific resource allocations within households in Zambia. The extension of funding of conservation farming (CF) training sessions in 2007 in specific districts in Zambia provides variation in CF takeup. We use this...
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World biofuel production has been increasing to improve energy security and mitigate global warming. Southern Africa’s bioenergy demand could increase with South Africa’s planned fuel blending mandates, triggering increased demand for feedstocks and agricultural land. Ensuring sustained production...
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– Theorizing from Zambia
Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, this paper engages with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural–urban ethnographic research from Zambia. It argues that people living in interconnected...
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Rapid population growth, urbanization, and income growth are triggering increased demand for high-value agricultural products across Southern Africa with scope for gains from trade and regional integration. We analyse the animal feed to poultry value chain in Zambia focusing on the industry...
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– Implications for local suppliers in Zambia
The last two decades have seen rapid economic growth in Zambia and the proliferation of foreign supermarket chain stores. However, this growth has translated into neither significant job creation nor significant poverty reduction. Furthermore, while the expansion of supermarket chains in Zambia has...
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Given likely increases in biofuel demand across Southern Africa, we identify suitable production models in Zambia for the Southern African market. This is crucial given, on the one hand, the problems of contract failure and transaction costs that plague outgrower models in Southern Africa and, on...
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– Competition in road transportation of perishable goods between Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Rapid urbanization and rising income levels in Southern Africa have increased the consumption of perishable and processed food products. This paper relies primarily on firm-level interview data to assess competition and bottlenecks in transporting time-sensitive perishable products across borders...
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– Political economy, trade, and policy environment
Expansion of biofuels production and consumption at the regional and national levels relies on both supportive energy prices and policy interventions. Despite enthusiasm for policy interventions to stimulate biofuel production in Southern African countries in the mid-2000s, the years since have seen...
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The need for energy security and climate change mitigation have increased blending mandates worldwide; in Southern Africa, demand for biofuels could increase following South Africa’s planned blending mandates. However, land constraints limit local industry expansion, with demand likely to be met in...
Displaying 48 of 86 results