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Showing all content in Kenya
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Project
Liquidity constraints, presumptive taxation, and tax compliance: Experimental evidence from Kenya
Tax evasion generates significant losses in government revenues and can lead to large distortions in the economy. Evasion is of particular concern in developing countries, where the share of the informal economy is typically larger and the government has limited sources of information. Over the last decade, an increasing number of revenue authorities around the world have...
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Blog post
Bad practices hold back small firms in developing countries
Survey of more than 20,000 small firms suggests better business practices are correlated with higher productivity, firm profits, and rates of survival. Management practices in large firms around the world have been systematically measured and reported in a series of papers by Bloom and Van Reenen (2007, 2010) and Bloom et al. (2012). These papers show that better...
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Project
Tracking constraints to entrepreneurship in Africa
An important part of understanding the growth prospects of an economy comes from understanding the constraints to business growth and entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the data in this area is scarce in East Africa. The World Bank collects two sets of data in this vein, both of which suffer from some well-known issues such as the focus being solely on formal firms, medium to...
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Event
FDI, SMEs, firm growth, and trade in East Africa
Strong and competitive firms form the core of economic activity. They contribute to economic development through job creation, higher government revenue, and increased wealth and well-being of society. Although firms, FDI, and trade already play an important role in the development of East Africa, the region has not yet tapped into its full potential. In addition, the...
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Project
The social and economic impacts of electrification: Evidence from Kenya
Universal access to modern energy has become a top priority for policy makers, non-governmental organisations, and international donors across Sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, nearly $600 million has been invested in extending the grid to rural areas since 2008. While there is now widespread grid coverage in Kenya, the national electrification rate remains low at roughly 32%...
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Blog post
Study provides fresh insights into the benefits of mobile money in Kenya
A recently published study on the long-run effects of mobile money on economic outcomes in Kenya provides some valuable insights that will benefit economic development and financial inclusion policies across Africa. The study found that increased access to mobile money has reduced poverty in Kenya, particularly among female-headed households. Rapid expansion of mobile...
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Project
Scaling up policies for agricultural trade
Our overarching research objective is to collect the data and build the toolkit needed to combine micro-level data from intervention trials with macro-level models of policy scale-up. We propose to generate a tractable trade model in which multiple agents produce and consume multiple goods and interact across markets via trade and migration. We will parameterise and...
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Blog post
Dilemma of capping bank interest rates in Kenya
Post signing of the Banking (Amendment) Bill 2015, Kenyans were full of hope and expectations of lower interest on their loans and higher earnings on deposits. Like with so many regulatory actions, the outcome for the people will depend on the implementation of the law. In this case, the fate of the law will rely heavily on financial institutions, and implementation...