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Publications (55)
Report
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This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Ecuador. This work was carried out by the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in collaboration with the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO Ecuador). The...
Our Institute’s expansive international research contributions, consisting of over 800 WIDER Working Papers in the 2019–23 work programme, delve deep into the development challenges the world faces. In the following country profiles, we pivot our focus towards Ecuador and Indonesia, serving as...
Working Paper
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This paper analyses the impact of comprehensive sex education on teenage pregnancy rates in Ecuador, specifically examining its implementation in schools.The inclusion of sex education as a mandatory cross-cutting theme in the updated and strengthened educational curriculum of 2010 provides a...
Report
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This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on which the model runs. It concludes with a validation...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Ecuadorian administrative data
This paper aims to assess the extent to which top earners in Ecuador were affected by the COVID-19 crisis compared to other segments of the population.Our analysis uses administrative data for individuals affiliated to social security between January 2019 and December 2021. We identify the top 10, 1...
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.
– Evidence from Ecuador
By combining household survey data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic with detailed tax-benefit simulations, this paper quantifies the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax-benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks. Our results show a...
Governments in low- and middle-income countries face a trade-off between raising tax revenue to strengthen social protection and creating incentives to enter formal employment. In developed countries so called in-work transfers (i.e., social benefits paid upon condition of being employed) have been...
Working Paper
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Microsimulation approaches to studying shocks and social protection in selected developing economies
This paper calculates automatic stabilization in Ghana, South Africa, and Ecuador to explain income cushioning amid income and demand shocks. Fiscal policies within these countries are also stress tested to gauge welfare contingencies and insurance. A discretionary action approach is adopted for...
Working Paper
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Low- and middle-income countries face a trade-off between raising tax revenue to strengthen social protection and creating incentives for the population to enter formal employment. However, empirical evidence on labour supply elasticities in the presence of informal employment remains scarce. This...
Technical Note
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This technical note presents one of the modelling approaches used in Jara and Rattenhuber (2022) to estimate formal employment elasticities, namely the estimation of a discrete choice model of labour supply with informal employment. The approach makes use of ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit model for...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Ecuadorian transaction data
This study leverages a unique data set on the universe of transactions exiting the Ecuadorian economy to estimate the tax-price elasticity of demand for tax-sheltering activities using offshore fiscal havens. I determine this elasticity quasi-experimentally by comparing the evolution in funds sent...
Report
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View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on which the...
Technical Note
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This technical note has been produced alongside a WIDER working paper assessing the effects on income inequality and income tax simulations of adjusting top incomes of employees in survey data based on administrative tax records in Ecuador. The paper and the technical note are based on ECUAMOD...
Technical Note
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This note has been produced alongside a WIDER working paper assessing the effect of the Unemployment Insurance benefit on income protection in Ecuador. The aim of this note is to describe the methodology used to assess the effect of the Unemployment Insurance through the simulation of transitions...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Ecuador
Based on tax records data from Ecuador, we analyse gender differences in top income groups from 2008 to 2017. Ecuador represents an interesting case as it shares many trends with other countries in the region in terms of women’s status in the labour market. While we observe a significant increase in...
– It needs a rethink
Household incomes in Ecuador were badly hit by the pandemic, despite the government’s emergency grant to families. H Xavier Jara Tamayo (University of Essex), Lourdes Montesdeoca (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Ecuador) and Iva Tasseva (LSE) say the country needs to rethink its...
What was the impact on earnings of the economic crisis caused by the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ecuador? To what extent did social assistance programmes compensate household income losses? ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador, helps to assess the distributional...
Working Paper
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This paper makes use of tax–benefit microsimulation techniques to quantify the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax–benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks. Our results show a dramatic increase in income poverty and inequality between...
View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. The report describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model takes advantage of these different provisions, and the database on...
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.
This paper uses national representative data from the Ecuadorian Family Expenditure survey to study the determinants of poverty and informality in the country, taking into account the two-way relationship between these two phenomena. The main contribution of this paper is to present new empirical...
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.
– Women, Conditional Cash Transfers, and Paid Employment in Southern Ecuador
Part of Journal Special Issue
Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Data, measurement, and trends
Inequality and social exclusion receive considerable contemporary policy attention. In the field of international development, inequality—both vertical (between individuals and households) and horizontal (between groups)—is a core concern in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Despite...
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.
– The Lack of Sustainability
Part of Journal Special Issue
Horizontal inequality in the Global South
View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. This work was carried out by the ISER in collaboration with the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales and UNU-WIDER. The results presented in this report are...
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.
Part of Journal Special Issue
SOUTHMOD: Modelling Tax-benefit Systems in Developing Countries
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.
– Simulating Universal Pensions in Ecuador, Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue
SOUTHMOD: Modelling Tax-benefit Systems in Developing Countries
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Ecuador and Colombia
The aim of this paper is to quantify the financial cost that informal workers would incur in the event of entering formality, accounting for potential earnings gains upon entry. To do so, we use representative microdata from Ecuador and Colombia, together with detailed tax–benefit models, and...
Working Paper
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Top income under-coverage in developing countries not only leads to downward biased inequality indicators but might also affect the ex-ante evaluation of progressive tax reforms. We propose a simple adjustment to top incomes for formal employees (e.g. employees affiliated with social security) in...
Working Paper
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This paper explores the role of the recently introduced unemployment insurance benefit (seguro de desempleo) in protecting incomes in case of unemployment in Ecuador. We use ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador, to simulate entitlement to the unemployment insurance benefit and...
Working Paper
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This paper aims to evaluate the progressivity of different fuel subsidies in Ecuador as well as the budgetary and distributional effects of a potential elimination of such subsidies. Our analysis makes use of ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador, together with representative...
View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. This work was carried out by the ISER in collaboration with the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales and UNU-WIDER. The results presented in this report are...
Working Paper
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– Simulating universal pensions in Ecuador, Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa
We use four novel, cross-country comparable tax-benefit microsimulation models for Ecuador, Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa to evaluate ex ante the expansion of a universal old-age pension in a static setting. Universal pensions would significantly reduce poverty and inequality in settings in...
Working Paper
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The aim of this paper is to explore the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits in Ecuador using two different approaches: direct use of reported taxes and benefits in household survey data, and use of simulated taxes and benefits obtained from ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for...
View the latest ECUAMOD country report here. This report documents ECUAMOD, the SOUTHMOD micrososimulation model developed for Ecuador. This work was carried out by the ISER in collaboration with the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales and UNU-WIDER. The results presented in this report are...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
From the book:
Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America
Working Paper
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– Effects on poverty and redistribution
In this paper, we present comparative evidence for eight Latin American countries regarding design and effects of cash transfers (CTs). On the basis of household survey data, we analyse their coverage, importance in household income, and effects on poverty reduction and income redistribution.We also...
Working Paper
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One key element in the reduction of poverty and (in Latin America) inequality has been the achievement of greater fiscal equity; we analyse one key part of this process, which is the earmarking of portions of tax revenue to be spent on progressive public expenditures such as social protection...
Working Paper
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– The lack of sustainability
We analyse vertical and horizontal inequality in Ecuador from a long-run perspective, as well as during and after the commodities boom. Using various data sources we show that Ecuador has made significant progress in reducing inequality, particularly since 2000. However, inequality has started to...
Working Paper
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– Conditional cash transfers and employment choices
Some claim that certain forms of social protection, conditional cash transfers in particular, result in perverse incentives for recipients in order to stay eligible for receiving benefits. This notion has a bearing on the design of social protection programmes and may undermine the political support...
Blog
The sculpture below in Mexico City is called ‘El Ángel de la Securidad Social’ (The Angel of Social Security) and was created by Jorge Marín in 2013 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) in 1943. In addition to a system of social...
Working Paper
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– A financial proposal to keep the oil underground in the Yasuni National Park, Ecuador
The Yasuni National Park is a protected area located in the Amazon region of Ecuador and is recognized as one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. In recent years the park has received much attention due to the media exposure of the Yasuni-ITT Initiative. This Initiative proposed a...
Working Paper
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– A feasibility study
The 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 Ecuador for year 2014. We then describe available micro...
Working Paper
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This paper uses national representative data from the Ecuadorian Family Expenditure survey to study the determinants of poverty and informality in the country, taking into account the simultaneous two-way relationship between these two phenomena. The results support the view of a heterogeneous...
Working Paper
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– Ecuador country study
Ecuador experienced moderate economic growth during the 2000s. The economy suffered a mild recession during the international crisis of 2008, but returned to pre-recession GDP per capita level in 2010. Most labour market indicators improved over the period. The only indicator that worsened was the...
Working Paper
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– New Evidence from Individual Income Tax Returns
This paper presents new evidence on the study of income mobility in Ecuador over the period 2004–11. We utilize longitudinal data of individual income tax returns to measure income mobility both at the top and at the middle of the income distribution, and we find three main empirical results. First...
Research Brief
During the 1990s, inequality in Ecuador increased because of a natural disaster and deep economic and financial crisis, as well as the impact of liberalization of the trade and financial sectors on labour markets Falling income equality in Ecuador during the 2000s partly coincides with the rise to...
Book Chapter
– Rising and Falling Income Inequality in the 1990s and 2000s
From the book:
Falling Inequality in Latin America
Working Paper
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This paper investigates if changes in the minimum wage have influenced changes on the formality and informality rates, and the level of wages in Ecuador. A 12-year panel was built. It allows to overcome the short time span of household data and so to characterize changes over time. Results suggest...
Working Paper
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– Rising and Falling Income Inequality in the 1990s and 2000s
This study examines the rise and fall in income inequality in Ecuador over the past two decades. Falling income equality during the 2000s partly coincides with the rise to power of a ‘new leftist’ government, but the trend was already set early in the decade. The recent trend is mainly associated...
Working Paper
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– Longitudinal Results from Guayaquil, Ecuador
This paper examines the gendered nature of asset accumulation between 1978 and 2004 in Indio Guayas, a low-income community on the periphery of the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. In so doing, it emphasizes both the importance of combining quantitative and qualitative intra-household data, as well as...
Book Chapter
– Longitudinal Results from Guayaquil, Ecuador
From the book:
Urbanization and Development
Book Chapter
– Estimating Local Inequality in Three Developing Countries
From the book:
Spatial Inequality and Development
Book Chapter
– Methodology and Evidence from Three Developing Countries
From the book:
Growth, Inequality and Poverty
Working Paper
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Based on a statistical procedure that combines household survey data with population census data, this paper presents estimates of inequality for three developing countries at a level of disaggregation far below that allowed by household surveys alone. We show that while the share of within...
Working Paper
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– Methodology and Evidence from Three Developing Countries
This paper implements a methodology for estimating poverty in Ecuador, Madagascar and South Africa, at levels of disaggregation that to date have not generally been available. The methodology is based on a statistical procedure to combine household survey data with population census data, imputing...
Displaying 55 of 55 results