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Publications (8774)
Book Chapter
– A global look at the first year of the pandemic
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
– The undermining role of vertical health policies in health systems
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
– The undermining role of vertical health policies in health systems
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
– Pandemic Governance Across the Global South
BOOK IN PRODUCTION | SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION FEBRUARY 2025We expect the state to matter in times of crisis to better provide for and protect their populations. But how is it, precisely, that the quality of the state matters? This book speaks to this question through comparative study of how...
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 survey and tax administrative data to analyse the effects of a sizeable employer-borne payroll tax credit for young, low-wage workers in South Africa. We find fairly limited impacts of the wage subsidy on the employment of young, low-wage workers relative to two comparison groups...
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
Book Chapter
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
– 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 indicated a landslide win by the ruling party, Frelimo. These results are widely contested, with various reports of irregularities.Post-election squabbles...
Apesar dos esforços desenvolvidos a nível mundial para formalizar as empresas, a maioria continua a operar informalmente. Dados recentes de 2022 indicam que 8 em cada 10 empresas a nível mundial continuam a ser informais. Os defensores das políticas de formalização na Organização Internacional do...
Despite global efforts to formalize enterprises, the majority still operate informally. Recent data from 2022 indicates that 8 out of 10 enterprises globally remain informal. Advocates for formalization policies at the ILO and OECD argue that it benefits firms, workers, and governments.In Mozambique...
Growing income inequality poses a major global challenge, even as the inequality between countries has shrunk due to rapid economic growth in nations like China and India. Both Indonesia and India experienced decades of gradually increasing national income inequality, beginning in the 1980s. The...
– Report from the 2024 Jobs and Development Conference
With over 1.2 billion people expected to reach working age in the next decade, there is a dire need for the economy to support global employment growth. From 8–9 October in Cairo, Egypt, the 2024 Jobs and Development Conference brought together global experts to tackle one of the most pressing...
Working Paper
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– A study of small, medium, and micro enterprises
This study measures the VAT compliance gap for small and medium-sized entities in Tanzania. Specifically, the study measures the under-reporting component of the VAT compliance gap. This study uses VAT declaration and audit data to conduct a bottom-up estimation to measure the extent of VAT...
Working Paper
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– The Progressive Vertical Index
Recent evidence from developing countries shows that the bottom of the income distribution pays more taxes relative to their income than the top 1%, highlighting a lack of tax progressivity in these societies. Current measures of tax progressivity fail to indicate which part of the income...
Working Paper
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Drawing from two labour market experiments in rural India, we offer insights on the influence of survey design on the measurement of employment. The first experiment contrasts self-reported estimates of employment with proxy-reported estimates from spouses. We find that employment estimates based on...
Technical Note
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This technical note describes the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) presumptive tax returns data covering financial years from 2015/16 to 2022/23. The data contains 21 variables, including information on taxpayers’ characteristics, turnover, and payable taxes. It covers the population of small...
Seventy years ago, Simon Kuznets was immortalised by his finding that inequality rises first and then falls later—the hypothesis widely known as the Kuznets Curve. In a new UNU-WIDER project, we look at what one of the most influential papers in the field means for inequality and development today...
‘The Number of Countries with High Inequality’ is the World Bank’s newest inequality indicator, one which it says will guide work on its agenda to ‘end poverty on a livable planet’. The indicator uses a country’s most recent Gini score, classifying it as a high inequality country if Gini is 40 or...
Drought is a leading cause of persistent poverty and humanitarian crises among pastoralists in East Africa. In a new book in the UNU-WIDER and Cambridge University Press Elements in Development Economics series, we examine the evolution, evaluations, and growth of the Index Based Livestock Insurance...
Rising public debt in Africa, exacerbated by multiple shocks and limited fiscal space, poses a significant challenge to the region’s development. Half of the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are in debt distress or at high risk of it, as calls for international action, such as...
Effective social protection programmes that meet local needs can significantly enhance wellbeing and break the cycle of structural poverty among the poor and vulnerable. Measuring their effectiveness and understanding their impact is crucial for policymakers involved in their design. The Vulnerable...
South Africa's unemployment rate stands at a staggering 32.1%—one of the highest in the world. Coupled with an alarming poverty rate, where nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line, the socioeconomic landscape is dire. Amidst these challenges, the special COVID-19 Social Relief of...
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.
– Micro evidence from Colombia
A growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first study of the long-term economic legacies of rebel governance. This effect is...
Working Paper
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In this paper, I show that the trend in spatial inequality in Mozambique almost entirely explains the outstanding surge in inequality in the country over the past decade, as well as its decline immediately after the pandemic, in contrast to its secondary role in the earliest years. For this analysis...
Working Paper
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Tax revenues are fundamental to state-building and development, particularly in the aftermath of conflict. Through the lens of the recent post-conflict experience of Colombia, this paper explores the challenges of increasing tax revenues amid violence and illicit economic activities. We study four...
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.
COVID-19 pandemic, household welfare and diversification strategies of smallholder farmers in Uganda
Agricultural activities in many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are subject to various risk factors that the COVID-19 compounds. Earlier studies on the effect of COVID-19 on smallholders neglect the issue of comparison with non-farm households. The study uses micro-level household datasets to...
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.
After decades of war, Mozambique experienced sustained economic growth and poverty reduction from the mid-1990s. However, these positive dynamics started to revert from 2015. Meanwhile, inequality stagnated in the period 1996/97–2008/09, before markedly increasing afterwards. In this study, we...
On 25 May 2023, three-year-old Neyamiah James died after extended electricity outages in Johannesburg caused her home oxygen machine to run out of backup power. On 4 March 2023, Yengiwe Mthimunye died after being turned away from Waterval Clinic in Mpumalanga because of a power outage. Bhekisisa...
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.
We investigate the behavioural responses of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates applying empirical bunching methodology to tax administrative data from Zambia over the period from 2014 to 2021. We find evidence for excess bunching at the first kink in the tax...
Mozambique ranks in the bottom 20 of the human development index, with nearly two-thirds of its population (18.9 million people) living below the USD 0.70-a-day national poverty line. Simultaneously, the country struggles to finance public spending and consistently runs state budget deficits...
Yemi Kale is the Group Chief Economist of the African Export-Import Bank. In this editorial, he reflects on the prospects for Africa’s future following the Afreximbank 2024 Annual Meetings, held in Nassau, Bahamas, on the theme of ‘Owning our Destiny: Economic Prosperity on a Platform of Global...
Blog
Critically examining the Global South’s proposals for international financial architecture reformsThis report offers a critical examination of the Global South’s proposals for international financial architecture (IFA) reform through a systematic survey and analysis of official statements delivered...
Blog
In recent years, governments worldwide witnessed a surge in debt levels. According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt reached a staggering USD 315 trillion in early 2024, with sizable increases in emerging market countries. This increase in borrowing, at least by governments, was...
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.
Technical assistance and increased use of ICT in tax administrations hold promise for greater revenue collection. Yet, the evidence on how these activities work in the real-world circumstances of developing countries is scant. The paper attempts to fill this gap by evaluating an intervention...
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 study presents an empirical framework that explores the relationship between poverty reduction and changes in the production structure of developing countries. We use the new GGDC-UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database to measure productivity growth within sectors and structural change –...
Journal Article
The shale gas revolution in the United States induced an unprecedented commodity boom across northwestern India. Leveraging population-based discontinuities in the contemporaneous roll-out of India’s national rural electrification scheme, we show that access to electricity increased total employment...
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 study examines the trajectory of global income inequality since 1981. Commonly used (relative) definitions indicate a decline in global inequality since the late 1980s. Looking ahead, it has been intuited that the influence of China's economic development — and that of other rapidly growing...
Working Paper
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This study provides an introduction to major discussions and core findings on inequalities in Viet Nam, drawing on a review of recent research, consideration of how inequality is discussed in legal documents, and an analysis of inequality using household survey data from Viet Nam. Inequality is...
Working Paper
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The impact of conflict on taxation and development has long been debated. Most studies suggest that conflict will have a depressive effect on state tax collection, negatively impacting economic growth and development. After reviewing the existing literature, we argue for an approach that recognizes...
Working Paper
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The public-debt-to-GDP ratio in South Africa increased from 26 per cent in the 2008/09 fiscal year to 73.9 per cent in 2023/24, raising fears that fiscal policy is not sustainable. This raises the question: did the government take steps to arrest the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio and regain...
Working Paper
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Refunds are an essential feature of well-functioning VAT systems and take up a sizeable portion of government spending. In South Africa, refunds amount to 50 percent of gross VAT collection, representing a substantial transfer from the government to taxpayers that has to occur at relatively high...
Working Paper
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Violent conflicts act as disincentives for sustainable socioeconomic development in conflict-prone societies, especially in the Global South. Existing studies focus largely on economic, political, and social triggers of violent conflicts; cultural factors, while important, are often not considered...
Working Paper
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– The equity implications of taxing more to expand the South African social security system
In this paper, we use a static fiscal incidence analysis model to evaluate the poverty and inequality impacts of using fiscal policy to finance expanded social spending in South Africa. We assess three methods to enhance the social protection system’s equity objectives: increasing the size and/or...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from individual-level administrative tax data
We use individual-level tax administrative data to estimate personal income inequality among the tax-compliant population in South Africa over the period 2011–21. Our results indicate that inequality of this population rose slightly over the period, with the Gini coefficient increasing from 0.64 to...
Working Paper
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Legal identity is an important aspect of securing access to public services, such as education, healthcare, and social protection services, including child support grants. In the South African context, in the post-apartheid period, many poor South Africans benefited from well-organized civil...
Displaying 48 of 8774 results