International development

In this report, we provide a detailed overview of Ethiopia’s current tax system and the evolution of tax revenue collections over the last 10 years. The report also highlights important changes to the structure of the tax system which have occurred over the past few years, and the associated tax revenue implications.

We evaluate an intervention targeting early life nutrition and well-being for households in extreme poverty in Northern Nigeria. The intervention leads to large and sustained improvements in children’s anthropometric and health outcomes, including an 8% reduction in stunting four years post-intervention.

This article studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on household expenditure on non-durables.

In this paper, I study the effect of unfinished sewerage infrastructure on early-life mortality in Peru. I compile several sources of administrative panel data for 1,400 districts spanning 2005–2015, and I rely on the budgetary plans and timing of expenditure for 6,000 projects to measure unfinished projects and those completed in a given district.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and associated containment measures are expected to cause far-reaching damage to economies around the world. Firms are suffering from reduced demand due to movement restrictions, from reduced labour supply and from constraints to sourcing material inputs. The breakup of otherwise healthy businesses in response to a temporary shock implies large social costs. Governments are therefore intent on designing emergency policies to keep businesses afloat. In this brief, the authors present simulations using firm-level tax records from Ethiopia, which vary the duration of the lockdown and the relative impact across sectors.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and associated containment measures are expected to cause far-reaching damage to economies around the world. Firms are suffering from reduced demand due to movement restrictions, from reduced labor supply and from constraints to sourcing material inputs. The breakup of otherwise healthy businesses in response to a temporary shock implies large social costs. Governments are therefore intent on designing emergency policies to keep businesses afloat. In this brief, the authors present simulations using firm-level tax records from Uganda, which vary the duration of the lockdown and the relative impact across sectors.