In a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This decision marked a controversial end to affirmative action in US higher education admissions.

Improving tax systems is important for multiple reasons. For Kenya, finding ways to mobilize domestic revenue streams is critical to cutting the vicious cycle of indebtedness that keeps the country tied to external partners. Correct knowledge of the gaps in tax payment helps to identify solutions for gaining much needed financial autonomy.

Sub-Saharan Africa has abundant natural resources and a substantial market, with an estimated population of 1.2 billion. The population is projected to grow by nearly 80% and reach almost 2 billion people by 2043. This population growth is expected to parallel an economic expansion, with annual economic output projected to reach USD 11.85 trillion with a GDP per capita of USD 5,996 in the next 20 years. 

Donors increasingly speak of locally led aid response, but often do not walk the walk. Case in point is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the humanitarian and development agency of the largest donor country in the world. In late 2021, USAID set a target that 25% of its funding would go to local organisations by 2025. Its 2022 progress report showed that...

27 February 2024 | The Stories of Change video series shows the impact of the first phase of UNU-WIDER’s Domestic Revenue Mobilization (DRM) programme. The first phase of UNU-WIDER's DRM programme helped improve Global South countries’ tax systems and strengthen their domestic capacities for revenue collection through seven different workstreams in 2020–23. The Stories of Change video series shows the transformations these research and capacity development initiatives have been able to trigger.

UNU-WIDER joins the 2024 ATI Tax Gap Workshop held 19–21 March 2024, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The workshop is a collaborative initiative addressing the crucial issue of tax gaps—the variance between potential and actual tax revenues—that hinders Global South efforts to generate domestic revenue to provide essential services. 

Despite advancements for gender equality in some spheres, labour market outcomes for women continue to be worse than for men. Gender gaps in pay, labour force participation rates, and measures of job quality are stubbornly persistent and continue to hamper women’s economic empowerment globally. Economic development and social change should improve women’s labour market outcomes, but even with large-scale public policy actions, gender-based inequalities are difficult to address.

While multinational corporations (MNCs) make up only 1.9% of firms operating in Uganda, they are overrepresented among tax holiday beneficiaries. New estimates reveal that Uganda’s revenue losses due to these tax expenditures peaked at USD 42 million in 2020. 

IN PRODUCTION: SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION MARCH 2024 | 

This book addresses performance and strategies adopted by firms and households in Tanzania to navigate shocks and achieve sustainability. How successful have firms and households been in building resilience to sustain their growth and development? Has the ability to navigate successfully through shocks and a changing economic environment improved? What are the lessons for managing and recovering from shocks?

OPEN ACCESS | The study proposes an alternative framework for rethinking the role of finance in serving the real economy from the perspective of New Structural Financial Economics. It challenges conventional wisdom that developing countries should take the financial structure of developed countries as the benchmark...

Journal | World Development

OPEN ACCESS | In recent decades, trends in female labour force participation rates have been very heterogeneous across developing countries, despite widespread economic growth, fertility decline, and narrowing gender gaps in education. 

Journal | Structural Change and Economic Dynamics

Journal | The Manchester School

OPEN ACCESS | Using the lens of a life-cycle model, we argue that an administrative failure of a wage payment delay in a workfare programme could adversely affect the welfare of the poor through two channels. First, it imposes an implicit consumption tax on the household. Second, it changes the status of labour from a 'cash' to a 'credit' good and encourages workers with negative net worth to work harder to clear off the debt.