In this paper van den Noord and Heady express an optimistic assessment of the possibility for the tax design to improve both equity and efficiency. The authors present a systematic discussion of how tax systems distort saving, investment, labor and product markets. They draw a wealth of examples...

Recent years have witnessed significantly increased attention to the challenge of taxing small businesses in the informal sector. However, much of this recent attention has remained focused on comparatively technical issues of revenue maximisation and policy design. This paper argues that this...

This paper outlines the methodology used by the OECD in its Taxing Wages publication, compares this approach to other measures of the effective tax rate on labour and uses recent results to illustrate its use. It argues that the strength of this methodology lies in its ability to make...

Social transfers vary enormously across the EU, as has been demonstrated in earlier research. This paper analyses the comparative effects of cash transfers on inequality and poverty, using consistent household data. The analysis shows that the distributional impact of these transfers is greater...

This paper reviews the literature on taxation of the informal economy, taking stock of key debates and drawing attention to recent innovations. Conventionally, the debate on whether to tax has frequently focused on the limited revenue potential, high cost of collection, and potentially adverse...

Administered prices should deviate from marginal cost if they are to be used as instruments to generate revenue. The analysis is based on the Bank's two-step approach to public sector pricing: first calculating marginal cost, and then adjusting it to account for other factors. The aim is to show...

This paper is motivated by the remarkable observation that children in land-rich households are often more likely to be in work than the children of land-poor households. The vast majority of working children in developing countries are in agricultural work, predominantly on farms operated by...