Maria Jouste | Chair
Maria Jouste is a Research Associate at UNU-WIDER. Jouste holds a PhD in economics from the University of Turku. Her research interest is in development and public economics, focusing on taxation and social protection in developing countries.
Her research is focused on using both empirical and microsimulation methods for the evaluation of policy-relevant research questions. She has experience in curating and employing large administrative tax data in collaboration with African revenue authorities.
Sebastián Castillo Ramos | Presenter
Sebastián Castillo Ramos is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research (FIT), and Helsinki GSE. His principal interests lie in Public Economics. Currently, he is working on tax evasion, optimal taxation, and the effect of tax evasion on labor decisions. Also, he is keen on the Economics of Education.
His main issue is inquiring about how the government's instruments can improve some distortions in the economy and how these instruments could improve social welfare. For a broad discussion of this, please see Interest. He received a Ph.D. in economics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and a M.A. nad B.A. in economics at Universidad Alberto Hurtado.
Corti Eliab Paul Lakuma | Presenter
Mr. Corti Paul Lakuma is a Research Fellow in the macroeconomics department at the Economic Policy Research Centre. Mr. Lakuma is an established forecaster, economic model builder and adviser with more than a decade of service to government and international organizations. He has advised the Finance Ministry in Uganda on macroeconomic and fiscal policy, fiscal institutions and revenue administration.
He has worked on the Domestic Resource Mobilization Strategy for the medium term for Uganda, where he authored numerous diagnostic papers to inform the reform process. Most recently, Mr. Lakuma has been involved in the conduct of several firm level surveys to establish the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on the productivity of Uganda’s employees, firms and industry. He holds an MSc in Economics with distinction at the University of Essex, United Kingdom and BA Social Science from Makerere University Kampala (MUK) Uganda.
Jukka Pirttilä | Presenter
Jukka Pirttilä is a professor of public economics at the University of Helsinki and also works as a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. He has previously worked for the University of Tampere, Labour Institute for Economic Research (Helsinki, Finland) and the Bank of Finland. He conducts research on topics related to taxation and social protection in developing countries.
Pirttilä has a doctorate in economics from the University of Helsinki and is a Fellow of the CESifo network. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Economic Journal and the European Economic Review.
Giulia Mascagni | Discussant
Giulia Mascagni is Research Director at the International Centre for Taxation and Development (ICTD) and Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS). She is a development economist, and her research focuses on taxation in lower-income countries. She is Research Advisor to the Rwanda Revenue Authority, member of TADAT’s Technical Advisory Group, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe, and Research Associate of the Institute of Fiscal Studies (UK).
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