This paper analyzes the effects of land market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to non-farm in a rural economy. This paper develops a theoretical model that focuses on higher migration costs due to restrictions on alienability, and identifies the possibility of a reverse...

Uganda?s economy underwent significant structural change in the 2000s whereby the share of non-tradable services in aggregate employment rose by about 7 percentage points at the expense of the production of tradable goods. The process also involved a 12-percentage-point shift in employment away...

This paper assesses the effects of selected structural reforms on labor productivity growth for 37 developing countries over 2006-14. It combines newly constructed reform indexes using the International Monetary Fund's Monitoring of Fund Arrangements data set and firm-level productivity from the...

This paper reviews recent international initiatives and domestic policy developments aimed at helping countries to protect their tax base against erosion by individuals and companies that allocate assets to or route income via low tax jurisdictions. The paper highlights the benefits and...

This paper presents the first evidence on the efficacy of a major program designed to encourage the return migration of high-skilled individuals. The Malaysian Returning Expert Program targets high-skilled Malaysians abroad and provides them with tax incentives to return. At several eligibility...

Empirical studies of tax and benefit incidence routinely ignore behavioral responses and measurement errors. This paper offers an econometric method of estimating the mean benefit withdrawal rate (marginal tax rate) allowing for incentive effects, measurement errors, and correlated latent...

The lack of growth in the Brazilian sugarcane-ethanol complex since the 2008 financial crisis has been blamed on policies: lower mandate, holding gasoline prices below world levels, high fuel taxes, and inadequate fuel tax exemptions for ethanol. This paper develops an empirical model of the...

The original goal of the Motor Industry Development Program was to help the automotive industry in South Africa adjust to trade liberalization and become internationally competitive. In simple terms, it consists of an import/export complementation arrangement, whereby the local value-added of...

The authors contend that in evaluating and designing investment incentives in developing economies, analysts should consider their effect on: the marginal effective tax rate (METR). Even simple tax incentives can perversely affect the METR. Many schemes have relatively generous write-offs to...

Corporations often have strong incentives to exert influence on the tax code and obtain additional tax benefits through lobbying. For the U.S. financial crisis of 2007-09, this paper shows that lobbying activity intensified, driven by large firms in sectors that depend more on external finance....