Suchergebnisse

Pierre-Richard Agenor's pioneering work on Integrated Macroeconomics Models for Poverty Analysis (IMMPA) is cataloged for the first time in this must-read volume.A class of dynamic computable general equilibrium models, IMMPA models are designed to analyze the impact of adjustment policies on unemployment and poverty in the developing world. Including both papers originally circulated through the World Bank, as well as new material that places this important work in its larger context, Adjustment Policies, Poverty, and Unemployment details the history and uses of these models to date, as well

Despite major public finance reform efforts over the last decade, Myanmarese public finances continue to be characterized by relative weakness in revenue collection, budget execution, and long-term sustainability. Myanmar is therefore in need of comprehensive public finance reform. Two top priorities of the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan are to establish a fair and efficient tax system to increase government revenues, and to ensure effective public financial management. In this paper, we analyse the scope for fiscal tax reform to finance future Myanmar Union budget deficits and lower the need for central bank financing. Specifically, we employ a newly developed dynamically recursive computable general equilibrium model for Myanmar to analyse the economic efficiency and household income distribution impacts of employing four tax instruments, including the expansion of existing commercial taxes, customs duties, and corporate taxes, and the introduction of new secondary and tertiary education payroll taxes, to finance 2022- 40 government budget deficits. Our results demonstrate that eliminating Myanmarese government budget deficits could release savings for future capital accumulation and lead to net present value GDP gains, regardless of tax instrument, but also that real household welfare losses will be substantial and potentially persist throughout our 20-year horizon. While the payroll and enterprise tax instruments are identified as efficient and progressive, they are likely to suffer from weak tax bases, implying that commodity-focused tax instruments, including sales taxes and progressive but less efficient import tariffs, will need to continue to form the core of any comprehensive tax reform in Myanmar.

Myanmar has, in recent years, strengthened its focus on human capital as a development pillar, and introduced legislation and adopted conventions on child labour. But child exploitation continues, including use of forced labour by the military and children performing hazardous work. Moreover, Myanmar faces a rapidly closing window of opportunity within which to train its workforce to meet the future challenges of declining population growth and an ageing society. To address the twin challenges of child exploitation and future labour market needs, we study a comprehensive stylized education reform package for child workers aged 10-14. We employ a newly developed dynamically recursive 2021-40 computable general equilibrium model for Myanmar to analyse the economic and household income distribution impacts of a combined child work elimination and education programme allowing current child workers to achieve the same distribution of educational attainment as wider society over a 15-year transition period. While child work elimination would be costly for disadvantaged rural households, the combined programme may leave them better off, though only after a long transition period. At the societal level, the opportunity costs of child work elimination outweigh the long-term economic benefits of education over our 20-year horizon. In spite of the lack of societal economic benefits, our proposed reforms do seem to be advantageous, dealing with the unethical and appalling continuation of child labour practices while improving income distribution in favour of disadvantaged rural households. This would allow Myanmar to move towards the goal of SDG8, 'Decent Work and (Inclusive) Economic Growth', while training current generations to support an ageing Myanmarese society.

Myanmar has, in recent years, strengthened its focus on human capital as a development pillar, and introduced legislation and adopted conventions on child labour. But child exploitation continues, including use of forced labour by the military and children performing hazardous work. Moreover, Myanmar faces a rapidly closing window of opportunity within which to train its workforce to meet the future challenges of declining population growth and an ageing society. To address the twin challenges of child exploitation and future labour market needs, we study a comprehensive stylized education reform package for child workers aged 10–14. We employ a newly developed dynamically recursive 2021–40 computable general equilibrium model for Myanmar to analyse the economic and household income distribution impacts of a combined child work elimination and education programme allowing current child workers to achieve the same distribution of educational attainment as wider society over a 15-year transition period. While child work elimination would be costly for disadvantaged rural households, the combined programme may leave them better off, though only after a long transition period. At the societal level, the opportunity costs of child work elimination outweigh the long-term economic benefits of education over our 20-year horizon. In spite of the lack of societal economic benefits, our proposed reforms do seem to be advantageous, dealing with the unethical and appalling continuation of child labour practices while improving income distribution in favour of disadvantaged rural households. This would allow Myanmar to move towards the goal of SDG8, 'Decent Work and (Inclusive) Economic Growth', while training current generations to support an ageing Myanmarese society.

Despite major public finance reform efforts over the last decade, Myanmarese public finances continue to be characterized by relative weakness in revenue collection, budget execution, and long-term sustainability. Myanmar is therefore in need of comprehensive public finance reform. Two top priorities of the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan are to establish a fair and efficient tax system to increase government revenues, and to ensure effective public financial management. In this paper, we analyse the scope for fiscal tax reform to finance future Myanmar Union budget deficits and lower the need for central bank financing. Specifically, we employ a newly developed dynamically recursive computable general equilibrium model for Myanmar to analyse the economic efficiency and household income distribution impacts of employing four tax instruments, including the expansion of existing commercial taxes, customs duties, and corporate taxes, and the introduction of new secondary and tertiary education payroll taxes, to finance 2022– 40 government budget deficits. Our results demonstrate that eliminating Myanmarese government budget deficits could release savings for future capital accumulation and lead to net present value GDP gains, regardless of tax instrument, but also that real household welfare losses will be substantial and potentially persist throughout our 20-year horizon. While the payroll and enterprise tax instruments are identified as efficient and progressive, they are likely to suffer from weak tax bases, implying that commodity-focused tax instruments, including sales taxes and progressive but less efficient import tariffs, will need to continue to form the core of any comprehensive tax reform in Myanmar.

Improvements in agricultural productivity and reductions in marketing costs in Mozambique are analysed using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The model incorporates detailed marketing margins and separates household demand for marketed and home-produced goods. Simulations improving agricultural technology and lowering marketing margins yield gains across the economy, but with differential impacts on factor returns. A combined scenario reveals significant synergy effects, as welfare gains exceed the sum of gains from the individual scenarios. Factor returns increase in roughly equal proportions, an attractive feature when assessing the political feasibility of policy initiatives. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1 ; TMD

Following Mozambique's economic collapse in 1986, the country began a wide-ranging process of reform, with the support of the international community. The diagnosis was of an economy that failed to maintain monetary control, consumed beyond its means, focused production excessively on nontraded goods, and relied on inefficient and inflexible microeconomic structures. Nevertheless, Mozambique was also at war. The pace of stabilization and structural adjustment quickened after 1992, when, concurrent with the demise of apartheid, civil strife finally came to an end. After more than 10 years of adjustment, the reform program has now been essentially implemented. Yet, this does not imply, as shown in this study, that sufficient conditions for sustained economic development are in place. Mozambique remains very poor, and even under highly optimistic assumptions about the future, the development process is set to last for decades. This report attempts to respond to some of the basic development challenges facing Mozambique and to provide both qualitative and quantitative insights for policymaking in the years to come. Throughout, the issues addressed are approached from an economywide perspective Finally, this study aims to demonstrate that sophisticated analytical tools can be of significant value, even in "data-poor" situations. The need for a clear perspective and in-depth understanding of the socioeconomic complexities of the country in question stands out. However, while the analyses in this report are Mozambique specific, the basic analytical approach is replicable and could be brought to bear on other countries both within and outside Africa. -- From Authors' Introduction. ; PR ; IFPRI1; Research Methodology and Models ; TMD

This working paper documents the construction of the 1994 and 1995 Mozambican social accounting matrices (SAMs). The aggregate macro-SAM is called MACSAM, and the disaggregated version is MOZAM. With 13 agricultural and two agricultural processing activities, the primary sectors are particularly well represented in MOZAM. There are also 40 commodities, and the three factors of production: agricultural and non-agricultural labour, and capital. Two household types (urban and rural) are identified, and government expenditure is divided into two separate accounts, recurrent government and government investment. MOZAM includes a number of innovative features, partly reflected in household demand, where a distinction is made between home consumption of own production and private consumption of marketedcommodities. Home consumption avoids trade and transport margins. Thus, MOZAM captures prevailing incentives for households to avoid markets and function more as autonomous production/consumption units. The disaggregation of household demand brings marketing margins in focus in relation to decisions regarding production. However, transactions costs are also important for exported and imported commodities. Domestic, export and import marketing margins are therefore explicitly broken out for each activity in MOZAM. Procedures used to balance MACSAM and MOZAM are also documented, including the use of maximum entropy methods to estimate the SAMs, which make efficient use of all available data in a framework that incorporates prior information and constraints. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1 ; TMD

We estimate the potential impact of COVID-19 on the United Kingdom economy, including direct disease effects, preventive public actions and associated policies. A sectoral, whole-economy macroeconomic model was linked to a population-wide epidemiological demographic model to assess the potential macroeconomic impact of COVID-19, together with policies to mitigate or suppress the pandemic by means of home quarantine, school closures, social distancing and accompanying business closures. Our simulations indicate that, assuming a clinical attack rate of 48% and a case fatality ratio of 1.5%, COVID-19 alone would impose a direct health-related economic burden of £39.6bn (1.73% of GDP) on the UK economy. Mitigation strategies imposed for 12 weeks reduce case fatalities by 29%, but the total cost to the economy is £308bn (13.5% of GDP); £66bn (2.9% of GDP) of which is attributable to labour lost from working parents during school closures, and £201bn (8.8% of GDP) of which is attributable to business closures. Suppressing the pandemic over a longer period of time may reduce deaths by 95%, but the total cost to the UK economy also increases to £668bn (29.2% of GDP), where £166bn (7.3% of GDP) is attributable to school closures and 502bn (21.9% of GDP) to business closures. Our analyses suggest Covid-19 has the potential to impose unprecedented economic costs on the UK economy, and whilst public actions are necessary to minimise mortality, the duration of school and business closures are key to determining the economic cost. The initial economic support package promised by the UK government may be proportionate to the costs of mitigating Covid-19, but without alternative measures to reduce the scale and duration of school and business closures, the economic support may be insufficient to compensate for longer term suppression of the pandemic which could generate an even greater health impact through major recession.

We estimate the potential impact of COVID-19 on the United Kingdom economy, including direct disease effects, preventive public actions and associated policies. A sectoral, whole-economy macroeconomic model was linked to a population-wide epidemiological demographic model to assess the potential macroeconomic impact of COVID-19, together with policies to mitigate or suppress the pandemic by means of home quarantine, school closures, social distancing and accompanying business closures. Our simulations indicate that, assuming a clinical attack rate of 48% and a case fatality ratio of 1.5%, COVID-19 alone would impose a direct health-related economic burden of £39.6bn (1.73% of GDP) on the UK economy. Mitigation strategies imposed for 12 weeks reduce case fatalities by 29%, but the total cost to the economy is £308bn (13.5% of GDP); £66bn (2.9% of GDP) of which is attributable to labour lost from working parents during school closures, and £201bn (8.8% of GDP) of which is attributable to business closures. Suppressing the pandemic over a longer period of time may reduce deaths by 95%, but the total cost to the UK economy also increases to £668bn (29.2% of GDP), where £166bn (7.3% of GDP) is attributable to school closures and 502bn (21.9% of GDP) to business closures. Our analyses suggest Covid-19 has the potential to impose unprecedented economic costs on the UK economy, and whilst public actions are necessary to minimise mortality, the duration of school and business closures are key to determining the economic cost. The initial economic support package promised by the UK government may be proportionate to the costs of mitigating Covid-19, but without alternative measures to reduce the scale and duration of school and business closures, the economic support may be insufficient to compensate for longer term suppression of the pandemic which could generate an even greater health impact through major recession.