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This paper discusses the design of tax systems in developing countries, with particular emphasis on low-income countries. It outlines the directions of reform that many lowincome countries have followed, often on the advice of the IMF or the World Bank, and considers whether they are justified in terms of theory and the practical constraints in low-income countries. Discussion of tax theory shows that there are sound reasons for much of the tax reform advice that is given, but it provides rather little support for the policy of full tax neutrality that is frequently recommended for developing countries. However, there are also serious political economy arguments against tax nonuniformity. The paper therefore concludes that the design of tax policy must also consider the strength of institutions and the rule of law. – taxation ; fiscal policy

This paper uses a model of an inland fishery in Bangladesh to investigate the relationship between poverty and resource sustainability in a specific case. It makes use of detailed fieldwork to build a numerical model of fishery decision making, which incorporates extensions to standard fisheries models. In particular, it includes fish migration between lease units and models the choice of fishing gear, as well as fishing effort, over the year. The modelling of fishing gear choice allows an analysis of the effect of management policies on employment in the fishery, a major factor that influences poverty in the locality. The numerical results show that while some simple policies to improve sustainability are likely to increase poverty, it is possible to design policies which affect gear choice and lead to reduced poverty without harming the sustainability of the resource.

This article considers the dynamic effects that the labour market has on poverty and social exclusion.1It shows how the analysis of labour markets can help our understanding of social exclusion and reviews some of the evi dence from Europe and the United States. The evidence is that there is consaderable move ment into and out of poverty. However, there is a significant group who stay in poverty for a number of years and a group that experience repeated poverty spells. The data also show that labour market transitions are an import ant cause of movements into and out of pov erty, although demographic factors are about equally important.There are tnterestang similarities between the pattern of movements into and out of un employment and those for poverty: many people leave unemployment quickly, but there are also important groups who are unem ployed for several years or who become unem ployed repeatedly. It is not only easily observable personal characteristics that are relevant to determining an individual's em ployment patterns: repeated periods of unem ployment appear to result from 'unobserved heterogeneity', rather than any damaging ef fect from earlier unemployment spells. This finding raises the interesting possibility that the observed repeated spells of poverty are also due to unmeasured personal character istics.

This paper considers the relationship between natural resource management and poverty by analysing a specific example: an inland fishery in Bangladesh. The analysis involves substantial extensions to standard models and allows the simulation of market distortions and alternative management policies, using data from the fishery. The simulations show that fish migration is the most important distortion. They also show that both wage reductions and bans on capital-intensive gears can increase employment, and so reduce poverty, without endangering the sustainability of the resource. The techniques used here can be applied to other fisheries and non-fish natural resources.