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Publications (15)
Parts of Uganda that had centralised political systems before colonial rule are more likely to have higher rates of voluntary tax compliance. Merima Ali and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad look at why that might be the case.Voluntary tax compliance is an important source for domestic revenue in Africa as the...
– A game changer for efficient and fair taxation
In May 2022, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and UNU-WIDER collaboratively launched a secure research data laboratory facility in Kampala, Uganda. The research lab is the second of its kind on the African continent in providing secure access to the revenue authority’s administrative tax data. The...
Millions of Africans lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, but state social security systems were of little help to people who lost their income.This is the conclusion of a study conducted by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, UNU...
In summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and avoiding societies from becoming more unequal. Now we are releasing a cross-country comparative study that analyses the distributional effects of the...
– Research recommendations to improve policies
How can we determine the taxation of wage earners or multinational corporations in a fair manner? Will simplifying tax administration help increase tax compliance in a low-income country context? In this blog, we highlight several policy recommendations arising from our collaborative research...
– Why does more than numbers matter
Can tax research be inspiring? Looking back at the three years of collaboration between UNU-WIDER and the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), the answer is yes – but even that is just the start. Our joint research and capacity-building programme carrying out analysis of tax administrative data has...
Blog
Several large-scale efforts have been made to combat malaria in the last decade under the Millennium Development Goals, and while these have led to a rapid decline in cases, malaria continues to exact a heavy toll on sub-Saharan Africa, both in terms of human life and economic cost. Given the...
Blog
22 August 2013 Roger Williamson Given the high growth rates since 2000 and low labour costs, Africa could develop manufacturing industry, agro-processing, and services. But these cost advantages can easily be undermined by factors such as inadequate infrastructure, particularly power, transportation...
Blog
29 June 2013 Tony Addison The June-July summer issue of Angle comes to you amid the 19 hours daylight of the Finnish mid-summer. Last week UNU-WIDER’s Learning to Compete (L2C) conference on industrial policy and development in Africa was held here in Helsinki. We welcomed 200 researchers and policy...
Blog
Tony Addison, Tseday Mekasha, Milla Nyyssölä, Lucy Scott, Finn Tarp, Tuuli Ylinen To meet development objectives, aid recipients and their donor partners need to effectively manage the macroeconomic effects of aid. Aid can improve the economy's supply-side and raise growth. But if the macroeconomic...
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) give aid to Africa a new emphasis. Yet aid flows to Africa have trended downward over the last decade, and as a consequence more Africans now live in poverty. This is especially true of Sub-Saharan Africa. Any progress towards the main MDG target of halving...
– Interactions between Politics and Economics
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for the UN system as well as the wider donor community. National authorities and their donor partners are faced with multiple priorities - rebuilding infrastructure, assisting war-damaged communities, and re-creating...
Many developing and transition countries have considerable regional variation in average household income, poverty, and in health and educational status. National human development indicators can therefore mislead policy-makers when large regional disparities exist. This project will investigate the...
Blog
by Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa There is not a single African government that has not attempted public sector reform, including retrenchment, in the past decade. Decentralization is back on the agenda: governments no longer see themselves as sole suppliers of social services, and now frequently opt for...
This special issue of the Journal of International Development presents the results of a study initiated two years ago by UNU/WIDER on `The impact of the liberalization of the exchange rate and financial markets in sub-Saharan Africa'. The project has benefited from the contributions of African and...
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