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Blog
2025 – No time to waste on debt and development
An increasing number of Global South countries are now diverting growth and development spending to pay off insurmountable levels of external debts...
Working Paper
Carbon pricing and taxationNowadays, all policy makers must engage with direct and indirect carbon pricing issues. However, the implications of different types of tools and methods to price carbon and support decarbonization deserve further attention in view of their...
Working Paper
Work permits for refugees as social protection during polycrisesThis paper studies the social protection of refugees during a pandemic. A pandemic adds to the many existing challenges refugees face, creating a dangerous polycrisis. Drawing on detailed household-level data collected by the United Nations High...
Blog
Is the Paris Agreement dead? Report back from COP29 in Baku
COP29, which just concluded, gathered country delegations, observers, businesses, and NGOs for several rounds of heated negotiations and discussions...
Technical Note
Toolkit for the estimation of tax gaps using a bottom-up approachThis technical note relates to the tax gap toolkit, which includes code (Stata do files) and a README file (how to run the code). The note describes the literature and methodology behind the development of the toolkit. The tax gap toolkit is related...
Working Paper
Economic impacts of electricity supply shortages in South AfricaThis study examines the sectoral impacts of electricity supply shortages in South Africa, using the cost share information available from the 2015 social accounting matrix. A simulation conducted under each of two technological assumptions, Cobb...
Blog
CoP on Gender & Tax Explores Gendered fiscal incidence analysis and tax-benefit microsimulation modelsAt the last meeting of the Community of Practice on Gender and Tax (CoPGT), held on 10th September 2024, the conversation focused on microsimulation...
Working Paper
Is a move up the job ladder an escape from poverty?Using panels of labour force surveys from Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and India and a recent work status classification, we provide an in-depth analysis of labour mobility up or down the job ladder. This classification allows us to observe...
Blog
Improving tax administration and data access – contributions to the Financing for Development Elements paperThe 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Seville, Spain, will convene in 2025, providing a global stage for countries...
Working Paper
Distributional impacts of global food price shocks in South AfricaThe world has faced an increasing number of global shocks that have resulted in large and unpredictable changes in global prices, particularly of food. These increases, coupled with the negative impacts of shocks to economic growth, have had damaging...
Working Paper
Can social assistance reduce violent conflict and civil unrest?We assess how one of the largest public works programmes in the world—Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP)—affected violent conflict and civil unrest. Using difference-in-differences methods and linking administrative and geocoded...
Working Paper
The firm-wage gender gap and formal sector churn over the life cycleWe find that women sorting into lower wage firms explains nearly half of the gender wage gap in South Africa, using matched employer-employee panel data covering the universe of formal sector workers. Sorting varies considerably over the life cycle...
Working Paper
Gendered effects of climate and conflict shocks on food security in Sudan and the mitigating role of social protectionClimate change and violent conflict are defining challenges of our time. However, it is not yet understood how they interact in shaping human welfare and food security, how their interaction shapes gendered outcomes, or how social protection systems...
Blog
The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development: What is on the agenda in 2025?
The forthcoming UN Conference on Financing for Development, set for mid-2025, continues a great sequence started in Monterrey in 2002, followed up in...
Working Paper
Securing food, building livelihoods?We assess the impact of a large-scale social protection intervention, Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), over a 15-year period. We find that the PSNP had a positive impact on food security but inconsistent impacts on assets. There...
Blog
South Africa’s new retirement savings system: will it reshape financial security?Launched on 1 September 2024, South Africa's two-pot retirement system is designed to offer greater flexibility in managing retirement savings. This...
Working Paper
Climate shocks and economic resilienceLow-income countries face the combined challenges of climate shocks and limited domestic revenue mobilization, yet these issues are rarely studied together. This paper provides new evidence on the impact of climate shocks on firm performance and tax...
Blog
Beyond Ukraine and Gaza: Five consequences of overlooking other conflictsThe years since 2020 have been one of the most violent periods since the end of the second world war. The war in Ukraine and the escalating violence...
Working Paper
Intended and unintended consequences of anti-avoidance rulesAggressive profit shifting by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is a growing concern for domestic resource mobilization in developing economies. This paper evaluates the revenue and welfare consequences of a flagship tax avoidance rule that has been...
Blog
Mozambique in post-election turmoil: Economic policies that could make a difference
Turmoil following presidential and parliamentary elections in Mozambique has been severe. Preliminary official results from the 2024 elections...
Blog
How conflict and illicit economies undermine fiscal stability in Colombia
In post-conflict settings, the ability to collect taxes is essential for building a strong government and supporting long-term development. In...
Working Paper
The long-term effects of crop diseases on education and earningsThe economic literature has shown that exogenous transitory shocks affect education by changing the opportunity cost of children. We argue that this is only part of the explanation. When permanent, shocks may change contracts and the organization of...
Blog
Understanding labour market inequality in Indonesia and India
Growing income inequality poses a major global challenge, even as the inequality between countries has shrunk due to rapid economic growth in nations...