This paper examines the impact of the recent recession in Belarus on poverty and broader measures of household welfare and compares the recent recession episode to previous economic crises in Belarus. The paper constructs a measure of vulnerability to poverty, based on an estimated probability...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce applications of RUSMOD -- a microsimulation model for fiscal incidence analysis in the Russian Federation. RUSMOD combines household survey micro-data and fiscal policy rules to simulate the Russian tax-benefit system: the size and distribution of taxes...

This paper finds that informal workers are more likely to have inferior work conditions, but do not necessarily report worse subjective well-being. Starting with lower wages, but also with less regularity of hours and paid vacation, informal workers have higher incidence of envelope payments...

The paper employs the Commitment to Equity framework to present a first attempt at a comprehensive fiscal incidence analysis for Ukraine, encompassing the revenue and expenditures components of the fiscal system, including direct and indirect taxes, as well as direct, indirect, and in-kind...

Despite the well-known positive effects of tobacco taxes on health outcomes, policy makers avoid relying on such taxes because of their possible regressive impact. Using an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect of cigarettes in the Russian Federation, this paper...

Do regions with higher working age populations grow faster? This paper examines this question using data from Russian regions and finds evidence that demographic trends influence regional growth convergence. In other words, keeping other factors constant, poorer regions grow faster than richer...

Using household data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, this paper assesses how aging affects saving. To overcome a systematic bias against the life-cycle hypothesis of survey data, the paper estimates how the age profile of saving changes when the micro data are corrected to...

The March 2020 update to PovcalNet involves several changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. Some welfare aggregates have been changed for improved harmonization, and some of the CPI, national accounts, and population input data have been revised. This document explains these...

The results in this report for the Russian Federation support the use of tobacco taxation as an effective means to reduce tobacco consumption, raise government revenues, increase public health and promote income equality

This note provides an update of recent poverty and shared prosperity dynamics, and some of the underlying drivers, as well as introducing the new international poverty thresholds that are currently in use. The purpose of the update is to take advantage of the release of Household Budget Survey...