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Publications (1415)
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.
– Resource rents, fiscal capacity and political institutions in developing economies
While it is recognised that the ability of states to raise revenues (i.e., fiscal capacity) is important for the provision of key public goods in less developed economies, it is less clear what its determinants are and what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural...
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...
Working Paper
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Cross-border traders face a choice between official and unofficial border crossings. The latter allow them to evade taxes, but expose them to other risks, such as bribes, fines, and arrest. We investigate the perceptions of cross-border traders about the risks of trading officially vs unofficially...
Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have become a symbol of national success and a means for global, commercial and geopolitical influence. But how well do they contribute to national development goals? Furthermore, global decarbonization threatens the future of many fossil fuel-financed SWFs. Here, we...
Working Paper
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This paper leverages a novel panel dataset covering the histories of 306 chiefs and 256 episodes of village governance and taxation by armed groups in 106 villages in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to analyse the relationship between the governance of armed groups and the power of...
Working Paper
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– Evidence and policy discussion
Offshore tax havens cause large losses of government revenue by facilitating tax evasion by wealthy individuals. This paper focuses on offshore tax evasion in developing countries and documents two empirical regularities. First, there is no clear development gradient in the exposure to offshore tax...
Working Paper
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This paper compares two important sources of tax revenue statistics for African countries, namely the Africa Tax Administration Forum’s African Tax Outlook and the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research's Government Revenue Dataset. We consider the background...
Working Paper
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Budget reliability is the first pillar of Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA). In this study, we construct an expansion of the PEFA government response accuracy indicator and test its decomposition, with an application to the government budgets and state general accounts of...
Working Paper
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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...
The Zambian government wants to reduce poverty by 20% by 2030. To make this happen, the government reformed their national cash transfer programmes. But what was the potential impact? In 2021, our MicroZAMOD team conducted an assessment—recommendations of which have been adopted at the highest level...
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...
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.
When seeking to increase their tax revenues, policy-makers face a likely tradeoff between decreasing personal income tax rates (making formalizing more attractive and potentially contributing to revenue) and alternatively raising tax rates (potentially slowing down the formalization of the economy...
Journal Article
– Insights from survey and tax administrative data in Zambia
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study examines how formal firms have been impacted by and recovered from the COVID-19 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 impact of the...
Journal Article
– Evidence from Mexican municipalities
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Displaying 16 of 1415 results