Dining and Wining During the Pandemic? A Quasi-Experiment on Tax Cuts and Consumer Spending in Lithuania

Dining and Wining During the Pandemic? A Quasi-Experiment on Tax Cuts and Consumer Spending in Lithuania
Author: Mr. Serhan Cevik
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 15
Release: 2023-09-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Could temporary tax cuts stimulate consumer spending? Sector-specific measures to the COVID-19 pandemic provides a quasi-experimental variation in consumption patterns to infer a causal effect of tax policy changes. Using a novel dataset of daily debit and credit card transactions, this paper investigates the effectiveness of Lithuania’s decision to cut the standard value-added tax (VAT) rate from 21 percent to 9 percent on restaurants and catering services during the pandemic in a difference-in-differences regression framework. I obtain robust evidence that the VAT reduction has had no statistically significant impact on consumer spending on restaurants and catering services, while other policy interventions such as mobility restrictions and vaccination have more pronounced effects. These results have important policy implications in terms of the expected stimulative effect of sector-specific VAT reductions and the effective design of fiscal policy interventions to counter the impact of pandemics during which mobility is highly constrained.

World Inequality Report 2022

World Inequality Report 2022
Author: Lucas Chancel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2022-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674273567

World Inequality Report 2022 is the most authoritative and comprehensive account of global trends in inequality, providing cutting-edge information about income and wealth inequality and also pioneering data about the history of inequality, gender inequality, environmental inequalities, and trends in international tax reform and redistribution.

Pandemic Exposures

Pandemic Exposures
Author: Fassin Didier
Publisher: Hau
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2021-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9781912808809

An illuminating, indispensable analysis of a watershed moment and its possible aftermath. For people and governments around the world, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to place the preservation of human life at odds with the pursuit of economic and social life. Yet this naive alternative belies the complexity of the entanglements the crisis has created and revealed not just between health and wealth but also around morality, knowledge, governance, culture, and everyday subsistence. Didier Fassin and Marion Fourcade have assembled an eminent team of scholars from across the social sciences to reflect on the myriad ways SARS-CoV-2 has entered, reshaped, or exacerbated existing trends and structures in every part of the globe. The contributors show how the disruptions caused by the pandemic have both hastened the rise of new social divisions and hardened old inequalities and dilemmas. An indispensable volume, Pandemic Exposures provides an illuminating analysis of this watershed moment and its possible aftermath.

Global Value Chains in a Postcrisis World

Global Value Chains in a Postcrisis World
Author: Olivier Cattaneo
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0821384996

The book looks to address the following questions in a post-crisis world: How have lead firms responded to the crisis? Have they changed their traditional supply chain strategy and relocated and/or outsourced part of their production? How will those changes affect developing countries? What should be the policy responses to these changes?

Attacking Poverty

Attacking Poverty
Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2000
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780195211290

At the start of each decade the World Development Report focuses on poverty reduction. The World Development Report, now in its twenty-third edition, proposes an empowerment-security-opportunity framework of action to reduce poverty in the first decades of the twenty-first century. It views poverty as a multidimensional phenonmenon arising out of complex interactions between assets, markets, and institutions. This Report shows how the experience of poverty reduction in the last fifteen years has been remarkably diverse and how this experience has provided useful lessons as well as warnings against simplistic universal policies and interventions. It shows how current global trends present extraordinary opportunities for poverty reduction but also cause extraordinary risks, including growing inequality, marginalization, and social explosions. The World Development Report 2000/2001 explores the challenge of managing these risks in order to make the most of the opportunities for poverty reduction.

Tax Expenditures in OECD Countries

Tax Expenditures in OECD Countries
Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2010-01-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9264076905

This book sheds light on the use of tax expenditures, mainly through a study of ten OECD countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. It highlights key trends and successful practices.

State-Owned Enterprises in Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia: Size, Costs, and Challenges

State-Owned Enterprises in Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia: Size, Costs, and Challenges
Author: Mr. Ernesto Ramirez Rigo
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2021-09-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513594087

Prior to the COVID-19 shock, the key challenge facing policymakers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia region was how to generate strong, sustainable, job-rich, inclusive growth. Post-COVID-19, this challenge has only grown given the additional reduction in fiscal space due to the crisis and the increased need to support the recovery. The sizable state-owned enterprise (SOE) footprint in the region, together with its cost to the government, call for revisiting the SOE sector to help open fiscal space and look for growth opportunities.

Freedom in the World 2006

Freedom in the World 2006
Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 924
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780742558038

Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 192 countries and a group of select territories are used by policy makers, the media, international corporations, and civic activists and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. Press accounts of the survey findings appear in hundreds of influential newspapers in the United States and abroad and form the basis of numerous radio and television reports. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

Natural Resources and Violent Conflict

Natural Resources and Violent Conflict
Author: Ian Bannon
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780821355039

Research carried out by the World Bank on the root causes of conflict and civil war finds that a developing country's economic dependence on natural resources or other primary commodities is strongly associated with the risk level for violent conflict. This book brings together a collection of reports and case studies that explore what the international community in particular can do to reduce this risk.; The text explains the links between natural resources and conflict and examines the impact of resource dependence on economic performance, governance, secessionist movements and revel financing. It then explores avenues for international action - from financial and resource reporting procedures and policy recommendations to commodity tracking systems and enforcement instruments, including sanctions, certification requirements, aid conditionality, legislative and judicial instruments.

Freedom in the World 2009

Freedom in the World 2009
Author: Arch Puddington
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 932
Release: 2009-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781442201224

Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 193 countries and a group of select territories are used by policy makers, the media, international corporations, and civic activists and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. Press accounts of the survey findings appear in hundreds of influential newspapers in the United States and abroad and form the basis of numerous radio and television reports. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.