Energy plays a central role in responding to emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, from ensuring adequate healthcare services to supporting households during lockdowns. Protecting the renewable energy industry and its contribution to providing sustainable energy access for all must be an urgent priority in the current crisis.

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Energy access is needed to maintain health during pandemics

Financial technology, or simply ‘fin-tech’, is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri an...

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Is fin-tech the new panacea for poverty alleviation and local development? Contesting Suri and Jack’s M-Pesa findings published in Science

Can reforms that shift the balance among different taxes in the revenue mix lastingly influence the overall prosperity of an economy and the distribution of income across households? The present study takes this question to the data, using the experience of 34 OECD countries over 1980-2014 to assess the effects of changes in the tax structure on the long-term level of average output per capita and the distribution of disposable income across households. Changing the revenue mix while keeping government size constant typically lift long-term output per capita when they involve cuts in the labour tax wedge below or above average incomes, cuts in corporate income taxes or increases in property taxes. The relative-income effects of revenue-neutral reductions in labour tax wedges are broadly in line with intuition: the relative position of those benefitting from them typically improves. In absolute terms, however, nearly all the income distribution benefits from revenue-neutral reductions in labour tax wedges, be they focused on below or average income earners.

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The effects of the tax mix on inequality and growth

We study whether innovation box tax incentives, which reduce tax rates on innovation-related income, are associated with tax-motivated income shifting, investment, and employment in the countries that implement these regimes. Using a sample of European and U.S. multinationals' subsidiaries operating in Europe and three income shifting models, we find some evidence that firms shift less income out of relatively high statutory tax rate countries following the implementation of an innovation box. We also find that innovation box regimes successfully increase employment but do not result in significant increases in fixed asset investment. Our study contributes to the literature by evaluating multiple income shifting models and informing the ongoing policy debate regarding the economic effects of innovation box regimes.

The Effect of Innovation Box Regimes on Income Shifting and Real Activity

Achieving universal electrification of rural healthcare facilities in sub-Saharan Africa with decentralized renewable energy technologies.

This paper addresses an important topic, energy poverty in healthcare facilities. We try to provide an interesting perspective on bringing together two SDGs. The SDG 7, which seeks to ensure access to affordable, sustainable, and modern energy for all, is interlinked with Goal 3 on Health. The literature studies as well as data on the subject are sparse. Nevertheless, a systematic documentation of the levels and variation in access to energy at the health-facility level is important for designing effective policies to improve the quality of healthcare and the ultimate health of the population. Using the 2012-2013 Senegal Service Provision Assessment (SCSPA), we assessed energy access in health facilities and health systems' performance. Data were also geocoded using ArcGIS 10.3 to give a snapshot of the situation.

Energy poverty in healthcare facilities: a "silent barrier" to improved healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa.

This article revisits the study by Dhammika Dharmapala and Nadine Riedel on income shifting between European multinationals published in the Journal of Public Economics in 2013 It used a promising alternative causal identification strategy for profit-shifting based on earnings shocks, which has over a short time period been frequently cited in the literature Using data from the same database, albeit for a period 10 years later, for 2006–2015, the significant causal evidence for profit-shifting from European parent firms to their lower taxed European subsidiaries cannot be reproduced Neither can similar results be obtained by considering profit-shifting to subsidiaries located anywhere in the world Results in line with those of the original study can however be found when using effective rather than statutory corporate tax rates While these findings raise concerns about the external validity of earlier studies’ result, it should not put the existence and extent of profit-shifting into question

‘Earnings shocks and tax-motivated income-shifting: evidence from European multinationals’ – revisited

Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual, by CHANG, H.‐J. and GRABEL I. (London & New York: Zed Books, 2014, 2nd ed.).

Analyzing data from four waves of the Nigerian General Household Survey and the Nigerian Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, covering the period from 2010 through 2019, this study provides evidence that poverty levels of children exceed those of adults. Overall, rural children throughout the country and children in the North face higher poverty and chronic poverty rates than urban children and those living in the South without clear trends of a closing of those gaps. These findings hold for monetary poverty as well as, for severe health, education, food, shelter, water, information deprivation and improved sanitation deprivation across Nigeria’s six regions. One exception is severe sanitation deprivation, for which especially rural areas in the Southwest stand out with higher levels of severe sanitation deprivation than in rural areas in the north and any other region. Large inter-state heterogeneity of estimates within regions, ranging up to 50 percentage points, for all except severe food deprivation however highlight the importance of looking beyond regional poverty estimates and regional differences. Only state specific, but no systematic evidence has been found for a gender difference in severe educational deprivation and school enrollment rates. Existing gender gaps though seem negligible compared to the overall level of deprivation and urban-rural and north-south gaps. Moreover, the parents’ literacy and more so the educational level is highly correlated with the probability of being poor or deprived in any dimension, in particular in rural and northern areas. Interestingly, up to about half of the monetary non-poor children at the top of the consumption distribution still face at least one severe deprivation. 

Caroline Schimanski

Papers

Energy poverty in healthcare facilities: a "silent barrier" to improved healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Earnings shocks and tax-motivated income-shifting: evidence from European multinationals’ – revisited

Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual, by CHANG, H.‐J. and GRABEL I. (London & New York: Zed Books, 2014, 2nd ed.).

Poorer than Adults and Deprived in Almost All Counts: Welfare Status of Children in Nigeria