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Showing all content in Uganda
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Project
Misallocation or mismeasurement? Collecting new panel data to improve production function estimation
SMEs tend to show substantial differences in productivity even within narrow industries and geographical regions. In order to design effective industrial policies, it is important to quantify such differences in the productivity of SMEs, identify what constraints drive these differences, and to understand what are the benefits of reducing them through external policy...
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Project
Reducing comparison frictions in the Ugandan credit market
Many first-time borrowers tend to find out about loans exclusively from providers — unaware of the total cost. Financial institutions obscure prices especially for new and naive consumers to maximise profits (Atuhumuza et al. 2020), preventing many consumers from making well-informed borrowing decisions. Therefore, credit markets are characterised by substantial price...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Trading up: Harnessing the AfCFTA for growth in Uganda
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) presents a promising offer of continent-wide market access for Uganda. However, these gains are not guaranteed, and the benefits of the AfCFTA also come with increased competition for Uganda’s exports. Using a sample of large geographically dispersed African countries, our modelling estimates a net reduction in...
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Blog post
Strategic or confused? Firm behaviour and missing millions in Uganda’s VAT
A quarter of Ugandan firms appear to consistently make costly mistakes, with potentially far-reaching consequences for theory and policy design Economists usually assume that firms behave rationally – they maximise after-tax profits given some constraints. But do they really? There is growing evidence that firms don’t always behave as standard models predict. For...
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Blog post
Collecting tax revenue in Uganda: The carrot and stick story
Text messages focused on enforcement and information are most effective at collecting tax revenue, while encouragement affects the average taxpayer only with visible benefits. We collaborated with the Ugandan Revenue Authority to test whether and what types of text message reminders help raise government revenue. Specifically, we used an experiment to test how effective...
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Event
Economic Growth Forum: Economic resilience, recovery and resurgent growth in Uganda
The Ministry of Finance, Planning & Economic Development, in partnership with IGC Uganda, organises the Economic Growth Forum - a high-level conference on Uganda’s economy held regularly since 2017. The conference provides an opportunity to discuss key growth challenges, learn from policy experiences in other countries, and identify a course of actions to drive...
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Project
Informal clustering, firm growth, and the impact of the COVID-19 shock
In Kampala, firms are heavily concentrated in the Central Business District (CBD), where they operate next to one another in high-density, informal clusters (UBOS 2011). Manufacturing firms operating in these clusters are smaller than in terms of number of employees and do not grow over time. Demand shocks that arise from COVID-19 are likely to be more severe in denser...
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Project
Recovery from the COVID-19 shock and the informal labour market in urban Uganda
As COVID-19 cases continue to escalate across developing countries, many governments reimposed harsh lockdown policies, reversing months of gradual economic recovery. In Uganda, public transport and non-essential businesses were suspended for 42 days, echoing a prior shutdown through April-June 2020. These restrictions significantly impacted the informal economy, where...
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Project
Investigating FDI linkages in developing countries
Foreign investment into Uganda has been increasing in recent years. However, the extent to which this investment is yielding significant returns for the local economy is uncertain. To date, there is little known about the differential performance and impact of foreign firms in Uganda, and therefore limited evidence from which to design policies to make the most of Foreign...
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Project
Cross-sectoral movements of labour in a low-income country: Evidence from Uganda
In this project we plan to employ a newly sourced matched employer-employee dataset in Uganda to explore the cross-sectoral and cross-firm movement of labour in a low-income country. Using this data, we aim to shed light on: The extent to which workers are able to progress up the job ladder and match with good and productive employers; The relative importance of...