This study analysed grade 6 and grade 9 mathematics data from the Annual National Assessment by comparing school performance in public and independent schools in three geographical regions: Western Cape, Gauteng and South Africa as a whole. The aim was to see whether low-fee independent schools...

This paper presents new evidence on the employment effects of a large increase in agricultural minimum wages in South Africa using anonymized tax data. We add to the minimum wage literature by differentiating employment effects resulting from the destruction of existing jobs and from the slower...

Sin taxes are increasingly being used to discourage the consumption of goods perceived to harm individuals and society. This paper examines the impact of South Africa's Health Promotion Levy (HPL)-the first sugar tax implemented in Africa-on the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in...

The effects of minimum wages on workers and firms depend on enforcement and compliance. While most research examines local determinants, this paper explores whether international market enforcement influences minimum wage impacts. In South Africa farmers exporting to the EU must comply with...

We use individual-level tax administrative data to estimate personal income inequality among the tax-compliant population in South Africa over the period 2011-21. Our results indicate that inequality of this population rose slightly over the period, with the Gini coefficient increasing from 0.64...

In this note, we present new evidence about firm remittance in India, and discuss the remarkable similarity and prominence in the role of businesses in tax remittance in three very different tax systems – India, the United States and the United Kingdom. Previous studies of developed countries...

The South Dakota vs. Wayfair (2018) Supreme Court decision changed a long-standing difference in the way U.S. sales tax administrations treated online and brick-and-mortar commerce. Online retailers now have to remit sales taxes just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts in most states....

This paper takes stock of what is known about the efficacy of actual Value Added Tax (VAT) systems, nearly 100 years since the tax was conceived. Existing VAT systems fall short of the idealized version on many dimensions, some by design and others unintended. Actual VATs might therefore have...

How does the fragmentation of local governments affect economic activity? We examine this question in the context of a major period of decentralization in Indonesia in which the number of local governments increased by 50 percent within a decade. Exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing...