Taxation for Development

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Taxation for Development: Rethinking Fair and Efficient Tax Systems for the Next Decade

May 7, 2024

Washington, DC and Online

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Multimedia

Postcard for the Policy Research Talk on Taxation for Development

VIDEO May 07, 2024

Taxation for Development: Rethinking Fair and Efficient Tax Systems for the Next Decade

Presentations

Oyebola Okunogbe: (PDF)
Pierre Bachas: (PDF)
Anne Brockmeyer: (PDF)

In the past ten years, tax research has expanded markedly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Novel, high-quality, digital-administrative data has combined with governments�� openness to evaluating fiscal policy in a context of rising debt and investment needs to open up new knowledge frontiers. In this talk, the speakers will share their findings from three papers that take stock of this emerging body of knowledge, as published in a recent symposium on in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

In the , Oyebola Okunogbe and co-author examine how new technologies, bureaucratic design, and political incentives can improve the tax capacity of developing countries. In the , and coauthors show that although real-world VAT systems fall short of the promising textbook model of the tax in several ways, the VAT remains preferable to alternatives such as sales taxes or turnover taxes. In the , Pierre Bachas and co-authors focus on the equity of tax systems and show that the distributional impact of taxes is markedly different in LMICs due to the informal sector and imperfect enforcement.

The researchers will highlight how optimal tax systems in LMICs often deviate in important ways from the prescriptions of standard public finance theory. At the same time, technology, new data, and coordinated policies are rapidly relaxing some constraints and generating opportunities for countries to rethink fair and efficient tax systems for the next decade.

SPEAKERS
Oyebola Okunogbe
Economist, Development Research Group
Oyebola Okunogbe is an Economist on the Human Development Team in the Development Research Group. Her research interests are in governance and political economy, including policies on public finance, nation building, education, employment and gender. Oyebola obtained her PhD in Public Policy and MPA in International Development from Harvard University, and her B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College. She was born and raised in Nigeria.
Pierre Bachas
Economist, Development Research Group
Pierre Bachas is an Economist on the Macroeconomics and Growth Team in the Development Research Group. His research focuses on public finance in developing countries��in particular, on optimal tax design and challenges to tax collection faced by low- and middle-income countries as a result of tax evasion, informality and differences in economic structure. Prior to joining the World Bank he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. He holds a Bachelor and Masters in economics from the LSE and a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley.
Senior Economist, Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment Global Practice
Anne Brockmeyer is a Senior Economist and the Global Lead for Tax Data Analytics at the World Bank. She previously served as Research Director for at the . She is an Honorary Associate Professor at and a Affiliate. Anne��s research lies at the intersection of public economics and development economics, with a focus on tax system design. In 2021 Anne won a from UK Research & Innovation for her agenda using from 15+ countries to study questions on development, taxes and firms.
DISCUSSANT
Manuela Francisco
Global Director, Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment
Manuela Francisco is the Global Director for the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment (MTI) Global Practice in the Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions Practice Group, a position she started on 1 January 2023. Ms. Francisco, a Portuguese national, joined the World Bank in 2005 as Country Economist in the Africa Department. She has since held various positions of responsibility in the Bank. Prior to her current position, she was the Director of Credit Risk, in the Chief Risk Officer Vice Presidency, and before that, she was the Practice Manager for MTI in the South Asia Region.
CHAIR
Deon Filmer
Director, Development Research Group
Deon Filmer is Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. He has previously served as Acting Research Manager in the Research Group, Co-Director of the World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education��s Promise, and Lead Economist in the Human Development department of the Africa Region of the World Bank. He works on issues of human capital and skills, service delivery, and the impact of policies and programs to improve human development outcomes��with research spanning the areas of education, health, social protection, and poverty and inequality. He has published widely in refereed journals, including studies of the impact of demand-side programs on schooling and learning; the roles of poverty, gender, orphanhood, and disability in explaining education inequalities; and the determinants of effective service delivery.