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Blog post
Property taxes in a pandemic world
While increasing demands are being placed on cities to address the current crisis and plan for resilience in the future, key sources of city government revenues are drying up. Taxes based on the value of land and/or property offer extraordinary potential for cities in financing urban recovery, but crucial to this is raising tax morale through visible investments in...
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Blog post
Economics’ racial reckoning: A discipline that studies inequality confronts its own
Economics has been a hostile environment for minorities. It is now high time for it to address its systemic biases and pave the way for a more equitable future, within the profession and beyond. There are events in history that cause us to disrupt our lives and thinking by rightly pushing us to pause and reflect. In 2018, the economics profession was spurred into action...
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Blog post
Impact of COVID-19 on public transport
Public transport has been hit hard by COVID-19. With ridership significantly down, operators in developing cities will have to face difficult questions for their future viability. The appropriate response must plan for contingencies, but never forget the value of shared transit in the process of economic development. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities across...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Informal traders and COVID-19 in Africa: An opportunity to strengthen the social contract
Government policy reactions to COVID-19, and peoples’ compliance with such measures, reveal the strength of the social contract between states and their citizens. In sub-Saharan Africa, informal traders often have a weak social contract with the state, and this has exacerbated their vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief examines the special...
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Blog post
Ideas Matter: Improving private sector performance
Unleashing the potential of the private sector in developing countries is critical to achieving productive job creation and inclusive growth. Productivity growth - increasing how much output is realised from a given amount of inputs - is one of the main contributors to economic development (Caselli, 2004, Hall and Jones, 1999). One reason for productivity in developing...
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Blog post
Why COVID-19 offers the perfect opportunity to remove fuel subsidies
April 2020 recorded the lowest oil price (USD 21/barrel of oil) in 18 years. This was driven by a lack of demand due to low economic activity worldwide. This temporary season of low oil prices presents an opportune moment for countries to remove inefficient fuel subsidies and reduce the knock-on effect to citizens. This reform also provides developing country governments...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Low oil prices during COVID-19 and the case for removing fuel subsidies
Global oil prices have decreased due to a fall in demand resulting from COVID-19 containment measures. This presents a timely opportunity for removing fuel subsidies, in turn lowering the knock-on impact on citizens. The revenue gained from removing fuel subsidies could provide additional resources for governments to respond with immediate interventions to address...
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Blog post
Ideas Matter: Why does democracy matter for growth?
According to Freedom House, some African nations, such as Ethiopia and Angola, made important strides toward becoming democracies in 2019, but overall progress on the continent was offset by increasing restrictions elsewhere. Why does this matter for growth and development? The reasons are complicated and manifold, but evidence suggests that the increased accountability...
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Event
IGC-Stanford University conference on firms, trade and development
The International Growth Centre (IGC) and the Stanford King Center on Global Development will be hosting a two-day virtual conference on the theme of 'firms, trade and development'. The event will be organised by David Atkin (MIT), Dave Donaldson (MIT), Cecile Gaubert (Berkeley), Pete Klenow (Stanford), Imran Rasul (UCL), Meredith Startz (Stanford), Eric Verhoogen...
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Blog post
Ideas Matter: Providing a big push towards women empowerment
In 2030, six percent of the world population could still be living in extreme poverty. This would be in spite of all the effort that is being made to achieve the first sustainable development goal of eradication of all forms of poverty. Presently, over 730 million people live in extreme poverty i.e below the international poverty line of $1.9 a day. In his book...