Suchergebnisse

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.

Studies on global health and development suggest that there is a strong correlation between the burden of disease and a country's level of income. Poorer countries tend to suffer more deaths from preventable causes such as communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions, compared with high-income countries. In low-income countries, the government health expenditure share in the general government budget is low and out-of-pocket payments for healthcare relatively high. They also rely heavily on external resources for health funding, yet sustainability of external resource flows is not guaranteed. This article explores increasing public healthcare funding from domestic resources mobilization, and evaluates the impact of measures to achieve this on sectoral growth and poverty reduction rates in Uganda using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. This article shows that increasing the government health budget share, facilitates expanded healthcare services, improved population health, higher sectoral growth and reduced poverty. The agricultural sector is predicted to post the highest growth when compared with services and industry sectors under both domestic taxation and aid funding scenarios, while national poverty is predicted to decline from 31 to 12% of the population by 2020. This article demonstrates that the most effective measure is to frontload investment in healthcare and generate additional domestic funding for health from a household tax earmarked for health.

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.

Palm oil is a cooking oil and food ingredient in widespread use in the global food system. However, as a highly saturated fat, palm oil consumption has been associated with negative effects on cardiovascular health, while large scale oil palm production has been linked to deforestation. We construct an innovative fully integrated Macroeconomic-Environmental-Demographic-health (MED-health) model to undertake integrated health, environmental, and economic analyses of palm oil consumption and oil palm production in Thailand over the coming 20 years (2016–2035). In order to put a health and fiscal food policy perspective on policy priorities of future palm oil consumption growth, we model the implications of a 54% product-specific sales tax to achieve a halving of future energy intakes from palm cooking oil consumption. Total patient incidence and premature mortality from myocardial infarction and stroke decline by 0.03–0.16% and rural-urban equity in health and welfare improves in most regions. However, contrary to accepted wisdom, reduced oil palm production would not be environmentally beneficial in the Thailand case, since, once established, oil palms have favourable carbon sequestration characteristics compared to alternative uses of Thai cropland. The increased sales tax also provokes mixed economic impacts: While real GDP increases in a second-best Thai tax policy environment, relative consumption-to-investment price changes may reduce household welfare over extended periods unless accompanied by non-distortionary government compensation payments. Overall, our holistic approach demonstrates that product-specific fiscal food policy taxes may involve important trade-offs between nutrition, health, the economy, and the environment.

Palm oil is a cooking oil and food ingredient in widespread use in the global food system. However, as a highly saturated fat, palm oil consumption has been associated with negative effects on cardiovascular health, while large scale oil palm production has been linked to deforestation. We construct an innovative fully integrated Macroeconomic-Environmental-Demographic-health (MED-health) model to undertake integrated health, environmental, and economic analyses of palm oil consumption and oil palm production in Thailand over the coming 20 years (2016-2035). In order to put a health and fiscal food policy perspective on policy priorities of future palm oil consumption growth, we model the implications of a 54% product-specific sales tax to achieve a halving of future energy intakes from palm cooking oil consumption. Total patient incidence and premature mortality from myocardial infarction and stroke decline by 0.03-0.16% and rural-urban equity in health and welfare improves in most regions. However, contrary to accepted wisdom, reduced oil palm production would not be environmentally beneficial in the Thailand case, since, once established, oil palms have favourable carbon sequestration characteristics compared to alternative uses of Thai cropland. The increased sales tax also provokes mixed economic impacts: While real GDP increases in a second-best Thai tax policy environment, relative consumption-to-investment price changes may reduce household welfare over extended periods unless accompanied by non-distortionary government compensation payments. Overall, our holistic approach demonstrates that product-specific fiscal food policy taxes may involve important trade-offs between nutrition, health, the economy, and the environment.