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From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
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Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (February 2012)
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
Blog
From the Editor's desk (November 2011)
Tony Addison As we come to the end of November, the snow has yet to arrive in Helsinki. We continue to enjoy clear skies and spectacular sunsets...
Blog
Making Finance the Servant not the Master
Tony Addison Today, there is much frustration with the financial sector. Society’s precious savings are not being put to the best of uses—investing...
Working Paper
What makes countries negotiate away their corporate tax base?Qualitative case studies suggest that the outcomes of tax treaty negotiations are determined by power politics and negotiating capability. In contrast, quantitative studies have tended to depart from a model that implies absolute gains, full...
Blog
The Imperative for Strengthening International Tax Co-operationGUESTAngle John Langmore and Perrin Wilkins When delivering the eighth WIDER Annual Lecture on rethinking growth strategies in 2004 Dani Rodrik...
Blog
Brazil's Economics Success: Lessons for Africa – An Interview with Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann
24 January 2014 In this interview Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann give an introduction to their research project at the Brooks World Poverty Institute...
Working Paper
On the Effects of Formalization on Taxes and WagesBased on a unique panel dataset consisting of both formal and informal firms surveyed every other year from 2005 to 2013, this paper explores the benefits of formalization to the government and firm employees in Vietnam. We find that formalization...
Working Paper
Tax-benefit microsimulation modelling in ZambiaThis study presents the findings from a feasibility study on the potential for developing a static tax-benefit microsimulation model for Zambia. The paper focuses on the details of the tax-benefit system and possible data sources, building on...
Journal Article
On the Short- and Medium-Term Effects of FormalisationThis paper analyses the consequences of formalisation on the performance of informal firms, using a panel dataset from Vietnam. We find that switching firms (before switching) have higher profit and value added compared to non-switching firms...
Journal Article
Optimum Fisheries Management under Climate VariabilityPart of Journal Special Issue Economics of climate change impacts on developing countries
Journal Article
Public Provision, Commodity Demand, and Hours of WorkThe theoretical analysis of optimal commodity taxation is advanced, but there is only limited empirical evidence to guide commodity tax policies. With this paper, we contribute to this body of literature by empirically examining, using Finnish...
Journal Article
How should commodities be taxed?The Mirrlees Review recommends that commodity taxation should in general be uniform, but with some goods consumed in conjunction with labour supply (such as child care) left untaxed. This article examines the validity of this claim in an optimal...
Working Paper
Public and Private Expenditures on Human Capital Accumulation in IndiaWe study a model of human capital driven growth, where the parent’s human capital serves as a productive input in the child’s human capital production only when that of the former exceeds a minimum level required to intellectually contribute to the...
Working Paper
Is There a Brazilian Model of Development?Brazil’s recent growth has been intensely pro-poor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. It has been suggested that Brazil’s unexpected successes are the outcome of a new model of development. The paper...
Working Paper
Tax-benefit microsimulation in EcuadorThe aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility to implement a tax and benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador using EUROMOD as an interface. We first present a detailed description of the main components of the tax and benefit system in...
Journal Article
The Welfare Effects of Health-based Food Tax PolicyThis paper examines the effects of health-oriented food tax reforms on the distribution of tax payments, food demand and health outcomes. We offer an illustration of how one can take into account the uncertainty related to both demand estimation and...
Working Paper
Quantifying the impacts of expanding social protection on efficiency and equityA large informal sector is a challenge for developing countries building up social protection systems. Expanding social safety nets reduces poverty, but financing them can increase the tax burden, potentially reducing availability of formal sector...
Working Paper
Inequality and fiscal redistribution in MexicoThis paper uses income and expenditure surveys from 1992 to 2014 and public tax and spending accounts to estimate the redistributive impact of Mexico’s fiscal system over this period. It presents standard and marginal benefit incidence analysis for...
Working Paper
Tax-benefit microsimulation modelling in TanzaniaThis paper presents the findings from a feasibility study on the potential for developing a static tax-benefit microsimulation model for Tanzania. The paper provides an account of the current tax-benefit system in Tanzania and introduces the survey...
Policy Brief
Fiscal Policy for Poverty Reduction, Reconstruction, and GrowthGrowth, poverty reduction, and social peace are all undermined when public expenditure management and taxation are weak and when the fiscal deficit and public debt are not managed successfully. And large-scale aid and debt relief cannot work without...
Working Paper
The economics and politics of foreign aid and domestic revenueThe main argument of this paper is that there is considerable heterogeneity in the way aid can shape tax performance in developing countries: through behavioural effects, donor conditionality, recipient policy reform and technical assistance; and...
Working Paper
The Fiscal Effects of Aid in GhanaAn important feature of aid to developing countries is that it is given to the government. As a result, aid should be expected to affect fiscal behaviour, although theory and existing evidence is ambiguous regarding the nature of these effects. This...
Working Paper
Optimum Fisheries Management Under Climate VariabilityIn most coastal developing countries, the artisanal fisheries sector is managed as a common pool resource. As a result, such fisheries are overcapitalized and overfished. In Ghana, in addition to anthropogenic factors, there is evidence of rising...
Working Paper
Food Price Volatility and EU PoliciesChanges in global food prices have affected EU producers and consumers and have triggered policy reactions through the EU’s political process. In particular, the EU and member states responded by social policies to protect their consumers, attempts...
Working Paper
Capital flight and developmentThis paper offers a critical review of the methods used to estimate the extent of capital flight and illicit financial flows from developing countries. The largest estimates in the literature are based on imperfect methods with a great margin for...
Working Paper
Tax Competition, Globalization and Declining Social ProtectionThe decline, or stagnation, in broad-based social expenditure, so crucial to the well being of mother and child, occurs because of various reasons. First, the government may derive less utility from this category of expenditure, compared to spending...
Research Brief
Taxation, Public Expenditure and Aid EffectivenessIn a recent UNU-WIDER working paper 'Fiscal composition and aid effectiveness: A political-economy model' Paul Mosley examines the claim that aid would have, in the long term, a negative impact on productivity and stability of expenditure in...
Research Brief
Aid and Government Fiscal BehaviourDonors are concerned about how their aid is used, especially how it affects public spending. For low-income countries that receive significant amounts of aid relative to GDP, most of the aid spent in the country is given to the government either...
Working Paper
Natural resources' impact on government revenuesMotivated by the fact that the taxation of natural resources is both crucial and particularly challenging for developing countries, this paper draws on a unique dataset to produce empirical evidence on two issues pertaining to the fiscal impact of...
Working Paper
Taxation, social protection, and governance decentralizationGovernments do not have perfect information regarding constituent priorities and needs. This lack of knowledge opens the door for groups to lobby in order to affect the government’s taxation levels. We examine the political economy of decentralized...
Working Paper
Taxation, infrastructure, and firm performance in developing countriesThis paper investigates the relationship between taxation and firm performance in developing countries. Taking firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) and tax data from the Government Revenue Dataset (ICTD/UNU-WIDER), our...
Book Chapter
Tax Policy and Income Distribution during the Last DecadePart of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
Working Paper
Are taxes good for your health?The global framework for financing development, adopted in 2015, places great emphasis on mobilizing domestic resources to finance the Sustainable Development Goals, which include universal healthcare. In a recent paper Reeves et al. (2015) attribute...
Working Paper
Fiscal decentralization and the shadow economyIn this paper we use the new Government Revenue Dataset to analyse fiscal decentralization. We find that developed countries are on average more decentralized than developing countries and that Asia, Europe and North America are among the most...
Working Paper
Tax revenue implications of trade liberalization in low-income countriesLiberalizing trade has proven highly challenging for some low-income countries, as a large share of their tax extraction derives from trade taxation. After significant drops in tariff levels over the last 30 years, the recovery of lost revenues by...
Blog
How Can Governments Better Respond to Global Food Price Fluctuations?
Much of UNU-WIDER’s research in the last few years was initiated under the 2010-13 work programme on the triple crisis of finance, food, and climate...
Blog
Development Finance: The Role for Aid in Africa
Aid’s future, its history, and its impact were the topics of a policy workshop held by UNU-WIDER in co-operation with the Embassy of Denmark in Dar es...
Blog
Beyond the Crisis of the African University - Why Institutions Matter
I recently returned from a week at the University of Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, speaking at a conference honouring Nobel laureate Desmond...
Working Paper
The International Fiscal Implications of Global Poverty Reduction and Global Public Goods ProvisionThe mixed record on the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets and the focus on global public goods in post-MDG debates questions the future of traditional development co-operation (official development assistance, ODA). Meanwhile...
Research Brief
Financing Growth in Low-income CountriesIt is a widely accept projection that many low income countries (LICs) will remain low income for some time to come. Consequently, when assessing the policy options available to LICs it is important to take a long-term view. In the WIDER Working...
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