Filter by...
Reset all
Publications (14)
– Four pieces of advice for policymakers
From profit shifting to sanction evasion, illicit financial flows divert funds away from essential poverty-fighting and infrastructure programs. A growing body of research provides essential insights for policymakers on how to tackle this key development challenge.Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are...
Blog
– The annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb
About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15-point action plan that aimed to curb practices that shielded a large chunk of corporate profits from tax authorities.But, according to our estimates...
The importance of domestic revenue mobilization and taxation for sustainable development is widely acknowledged in global development discussions, but for real change to happen the amounts of development aid and political engagement need to live up to commitments.Key factors of development...
The world has been trying to curb profit shifting to tax havens for a decade, but consistent time series evaluating the impact of these reforms have been largely absent. This column uses a new time series of global profit shifting covering the 1975–19 period to estimate that the fraction of...
Does foreign aid end up in the pockets of elites instead of contributing to inclusive economic development? A recently published journal article offers new evidence of elite capture of World Bank loans by analysing data on bank accounts and shell companies in offshore financial centers. The...
'I say to the Russian oligarchs and the corrupt leaders who bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more… We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.' – Joe Biden at the 1 March 2022, State of the Union Address One way that Western sanctions on Russia are supposed to work is by...
– How tax havens facilitate corruption in the extractive industries
In many countries, news of an oil discovery or the award of an exploration license is rarely greeted with enthusiasm by the general public. Any hopes of widespread development quickly vanish once people realize only a small elite group stands to benefit. Estimates of global foreign bribery suggest...
Blog
– How we are supporting the data revolution
At the core of efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals lies a commitment to enhance domestic revenue mobilization. Strengthening capacity to collect tax and other revenue is key for developing countries as they move forward. Not only is this priority enshrined in SDG 17.1, it also sits...
Blog
– Data, research, and improved policymaking in South Africa
Policymakers often work in the dark, as they try to make real impact on people’s lives. If you don’t have good data, being worked on by good researchers, it can be hard to know whether efforts are truly making a difference. In South Africa one key area where data and evidence have been missing is on...
– Growing the animal-feed-to-poultry regional value chain
In 2016 the South African poultry sector faced intense pressure from two sides in the form of much higher input costs and increased imports of low-priced chicken from the European Union and the USA. Poultry firms have called for increased protection against imports. Instead of taking a short-term...
Blog
– What role has the Employment Tax Incentive played?
South Africa has some of the highest rates of joblessness in the world and youth unemployment is particularly severe. Roughly two in five young South Africans who want work cannot find it, according to labour force surveys. The South African government has introduced numerous policies to help young...
– Regional integration in southern Africa through supermarkets
Walk into any supermarket and you will find a mix of products to stock the kitchen. It’s easy to assume that many of the goods on offer are sourced locally and from nearby countries. In the region of southern Africa, however, imported goods are often shipped from another continent instead of...
Supermarkets are a key route to market for many suppliers of food and household consumable products. The growth of supermarket chains in southern Africa presents important opportunities for suppliers, as it potentially opens up much larger regional markets for them. Supermarkets can therefore be a...
Blog
The white-painted cluster of traditional style buildings might suggest that this was a farm on the South African veldt. Not so however—it was Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) Annual Forum held on 14-15 July 2015 at the University of Witwatersrand, a high-level gathering of economists...
Displaying 14 of 14 results