As Malaysia continues to strive toward high-income status, accelerating productivity growth has become the country's central economic policy challenge. Productivity growth has become increasingly important as the country's traditional economic engines have slowed. Declining oil and gas output,...

Croatia has made significant economic progress since independence, but the global financial crisis has exposed weaknesses in its economy and growth model. While growth has resumed in 2015, income convergence has been thrown back by the crisis and by the prolonged recession that followed and is...

Despite decades of impressive economic growth, tax revenues in the Dominican Republic (DR) remain well below the regional average. The DR's tax base is extremely narrow, with extensive exemptions, deductions, zero-ratings, and allowances across all major tax categories. Tax expenditures amounted...

This report takes an in-depth look, from a policy perspective, at the trade-offs between increasing tax collection and improving the equity of the fiscal system. As part of this effort, the report places the Peruvian tax system in an international context and considers the key challenges the...

As part of the ongoing tax policy dialogue with the Government of Ethiopia, the World BankGroup organized a workshop in Addis Ababa, on June 20, 2016, to discuss tobacco use, its healthimpact, and excise taxes on tobacco as a public policy measure to reduce tobacco use, and hencethe risk of ill...

Implementing governments need to be prepared to face considerable opposition in introducing and defending a new sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax. Arguments against SSB taxes tend to closely mirror those used against tobacco taxes, including that these taxes are not effective, are regressive...

The World Bank's Nepal Fiscal Federalism Update (NFFU) aims to report annually on the progress of fiscal federalism in Nepal and identify implementation gaps. This second update reviews the progress on fiscal federalism since the publication of the first report and provides an update on economic...

This note will examine the distributional and efficiency issues associated with the fiscal response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis in Da Nang city and nationally in Vietnam. More specifically, we look at the social assistance (cash transfer) programs. Did these programs efficiently reach...