This paper provides an assessment of the poverty and social impact of replacing Ethiopia`s sales tax with a value-added tax (VAT). The results indicate that this reform has not had a major adverse effect on the poorest 40 percent of the population. The VAT is progressive in its incidence, and...

Economic volatility remains a fact of life in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Household-level shocks create large consumption fluctuations, raising the incidence of poverty. Drawing on micro-level data from South Africa and Tanzania, we examine the vulnerability to shocks across household types (e.g....

How much an economy should invest in its physical infrastructure is a crucial question being asked by policy makers from developing countries where financial resources for economic development are limited. This paper aims to address this question by bringing insights from the literature that...

Mozambique has achieved remarkable macroeconomic success over recent decades, boasting one of the world's highest rates of GDP growth. However, absolute poverty remains persistent, spilling over into social unrest. To better understand the link between aggregate growth and household welfare,...

The authors estimate changes in the distribution of household consumption expenditure in Namibia since Independence in 1990 and the effects on poverty. To produce comparability between two household surveys, they use survey matching techniques and apply the framework of stochastic dominance to...

After more than a decade of economic decline and civil war, Uganda was able to return to economic growth thanks to the policies pursued by Museveni’s National Resistance Movement which elicited considerable donor support. They include macroeconomic reforms, public sector restructuring,...

No Poverty' and 'Reduced Inequalities' are two out of the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Nowadays, Kenya faces high levels of poverty and inequality: 36 percent of the population live below the poverty line and the Gini coefficient was 0.445 in 2015. Against this...