主讲人：Mazhar Waseem 教授，曼彻斯特大学

时间：2025年5月30日 （周五）10:00-12:10

地点：北京大学国家发展研究院承泽园校区249教室

主讲人简介：

Mazhar Waseem is a Profesor of Economics at the University of Manchester. His research primarily focuses on Public Finance issues of emerging economies, especially on the behavior of economic agents to tax and transfer policies. The main aim of the research is to understand how given these behavioral responses and the weak enforcement environment of the emerging economies the design of the tax policy there can be improved. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics. He is a Research Associate at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, Research Affiliate at the Centre of Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and a Research Network Fellow of CESifo. Before beginning his Ph. D , he worked for Pakistan’s revenue authority for more than ten years.

1st Paper:

Title: From Womb to Workforce: Early Origins of Poverty across Life and Generations

Abstract: We study how early-life nutritional shocks contribute to the persistence of poverty in a representative developing country. Leveraging an exogenous shock to in-utero nutrition and exploiting data from four different sources, including administrative tax data and self-conducted household survey, we estimate the effects over the life cycle and across generations. We find that prenatal exposure reduces birth weight, educational attainment, and adult earnings—especially among children from poor households. These effects persist over the next generation. Our findings highlight how mild but widespread nutritional shocks, when interacting with household poverty, can entrench inequality across generations and explain persistent socioeconomic gaps within and across low-income countries.

2nd Paper:

Title: At What Cost? Curtailing Profit Shifting by Multinational Enterprises

Abstract: Aggressive profit shifting by MNEs is a growing concern for domestic resource mobilization in developing economies. This paper evaluates the revenue and welfare consequences of a flagship anti-avoidance measure that has been implemented in more than 45 countries to prevent profit shifting by MNEs through the debt channel. Our focus is Uganda, a representative developing country which implemented the measure in 2018. Exploiting admin data comprising the universe of corporate tax returns, we find that the rule does not significantly increase profits reported by MNEs in Uganda or tax remitted by them in Uganda. As an unintended consequence, however, the implementation of the measure leads to a contraction in real economic activity, reducing the turnover, employment, and trade of treated MNEs. We highlight the limited targeting efficiency of the rule, questioning its overall effects on welfare.

报名二维码：