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Showing all content in Zambia
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Blog post
Informal workers and taxation in Zambia: Who pays and does it make a difference?
Taxation in Africa has been increasingly covered in the news, especially with controversial attempts in countries such as Benin, Tanzania, and Uganda to tax users of social media sites and phone texting services. While the true intentions of these efforts are debatable, raising sufficient domestic revenue has long been a challenge for many African governments. A long line...
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Blog post
Is the rule of law good for women? Evidence from micro-entrepreneurs in Lusaka, Zambia
The rapidly growing cities of the developing world can be an engine for private sector growth (Krugman, 1991; Glaeser, 2011). However, the positive externalities of living in urban areas become lost opportunities when people cannot safely trade with each other. This can happen either because of lack of mutual confidence or weakness in the rule of law. Across countries,...
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Data Item
Data: Prepaid electricity metering: Costs, benefits and potential for scale-up
The standard approach to recovering the cost of electricity provision is to bill customers monthly for past consumption. If unable to pay, customers face disconnection, the utility loses revenue, and the service provision model is undermined. A possible solution to this problem is prepaid metering, in which customers buy electricity upfront and use it until the prepaid...
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Case Study: Firms
Increasing women’s participation in the workforce
Our research indicates that access to education, finance, and transportation can help increase women's independence and participation in the labour force.
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Blog post
Rethinking VAT: Making sense of Zambia’s policy U-turn on VAT
On 28 September 2018, the Zambian Minister of Finance, Margaret Mwanakatwe, in her maiden budget address to Parliament, announced a major policy change set to turn the Zambian tax system on its head. Effective April 2019, Zambia will abolish Value Added Tax (VAT) and replace it with a non-refundable sales tax. This move re-opened a policy debate: Which consumption tax is...
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Blog post
The effects of electricity price increases on the poor in Zambia
The distribution of electricity subsidies and access to the grid is skewed towards rich households, resulting in an increase in extreme poverty. However, budget neutral mitigation strategies lead to larger reductions in extreme poverty compared to the baseline scenario. In 2016, the electricity crisis in Zambia reached its peak, with daily load shedding of up to 12 hours...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Women, entrepreneurship, and institutions
This project aims to investigate whether improving enforcement of rule of law benefits female entrepreneurs more than male entrepreneurs, thus serving to reduce the gender gap in entrepreneurship. The project builds upon previous work that collected data on the distribution of all businesses across Lusaka. This brief presents new analysis of this data which reveals...
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Publication - Working Paper
Teacher pay and educational outcomes: Evidence from the rural hardship allowance in Zambia
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Publication - Project Report
A study on personal income tax