A rigorous understanding of the developmental effect of fiscal transfers to subnational governments remains an important policy research issue globally. This paper exploits a novel dataset of 20 years of municipal poverty maps and local public finances to study the effects on local welfare of a...

Colombia has reduced extreme poverty in the past 16 years by almost half, moderate poverty by 22 percentage points, and made more than four million Colombians jump the threshold of multidimensional poverty. However, it remains one of the most unequal countries in the region, after Brazil and...

Despite the obvious positive health impacts of tobacco taxation, an argument raised against it is that poor households bear the burden of the increased prices because of their higher share of spending on tobacco. This note includes estimates of the distributional impacts of price rises on...

Tobacco taxes have positive impacts on health outcomes. However, policy makers often hesitate to use them because of the perception that poorer households are affected disproportionally more than richer households. This study compares the simulated distributional effects of tobacco tax increases...

This paper uses Mongolia's Household Socio Economic Survey for 2016 to estimate the distributive impact of taxes and transfers. The findings show that the system is progressive and contributes to reductions in poverty and inequality. The Gini coefficient of the pre-tax-and-transfer income is...

In a context of fiscal consolidation and the need to deliver on a structural reform agenda, policy makers in Albania must not lose sight of the critical redistributive role of the fiscal system, particularly its impact on poverty and inequality. Using household survey data, this paper estimates...

Understanding the economic and social effects of the recent global trends of rising market concentration and market power has become a policy priority, particularly in developing countries where markets are often more concentrated. In this context, since the poor are typically the most affected...

This paper assesses the impact of fiscal policy on the incidence, depth, and severity of poverty, and examines whether there is room for an increased role for fiscal policy in improving the wellbeing of the poor. The results show that the combined effect of taxes and social spending helped...

Iraq was plunged into two simultaneous crises in the second half of 2014, one driven by a sharp decline in oil prices, the other, by the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The severity and recurrent nature of these crises demand a fast understanding and quantification of their...

Armenia meets about 75 percent of its energy needs through imports, with natural gas imports from Russia accounting for about 80 percent of total energy imports and 60 percent of total primary energy supply. Because of high dependence on imported energy, Armenia is vulnerable to external energy...