Max Gallien’s research while affiliated with Institute of Development Studies and other places

Around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic drew attention to state social protection and its limitations. Less attention has been paid to what is likely the world’s largest system of predominantly non-state welfare provision: zakat, an annual Islamic obligatory payment of a percentage of productive wealth to the poor and other eligible recipients. We explore how states and citizens engage with zakat during crises through a case study of the Covid-19 pandemic in Pakistan, Egypt, and Morocco, drawing on novel and nationally representative survey data of 5484 respondents across the three countries. While we may expect that citizens may be less motivated to pay zakat in times of personal economic hardship, we find that a large majority of the general population and of zakat contributors perceives zakat as particularly important in the Covid context. We show that while zakat may play an important role in non-state social welfare provision supplementing state social protection and redistribution in times of crisis, state attempts to harness it are often ineffective. However, while we find that higher income individuals are more likely to pay zakat, even only among those that are eligible, there are potentially negative equity impacts given the flat rate at which it is levied and the fact that people tend to give through personal networks.

International and domestic policymakers have long assumed that informal economies represent an ‘untapped goldmine’ for government coffers. While recent research has highlighted that many informal businesses do pay a range of formal and informal taxes, there has, to date, been little systematic account of their tax burdens. Using a novel dataset of 2,700 informal enterprises in the Accra metropolitan area, we explore the nature and impact of taxation in the informal sector. We find that the majority of informal sector operators pay a range of taxes and fees, which together amount to a significant burden, especially for low earners. These payments are skewed and regressive. Two additional findings emerge in relation to the structure of these taxes. First, the incidence and burden of tax payments is strongly correlated with visibility to the state. Second, taxes and fees are highly regressive, with lower-earning operators paying significantly more in relation to their earnings. These findings have important implications for efforts to tax informal businesses in low- and middle- income countries. The regressivity of efforts to tax the informal sector is often framed as a price worth paying for simplicity. Our study provides both an estimation of this ‘price’, and an underlying argument for collecting this kind of data on taxation of informal enterprises in order to assess real policy impacts.

What is the relationship between trust in the state and vaccine hesitancy among a marginalized sub‐population? This article explores attitudes towards COVID‐19 vaccination programmes of informal workers in the context of Lahore, Pakistan, and draws on in‐depth conversations with informal workers across four sectors in 2021. It finds a surprising disconnect between vaccine scepticism and actual decisions to have the vaccination. Those that were vaccinated did not necessarily believe in its effectiveness, while trust in the state did not critically shape health‐seeking behaviour. The article observes striking sectoral variation in perceptions of the pandemic and willingness to get vaccinated, with greater scepticism and hesitancy among male‐dominated street vendors and transport workers relative to females working as home‐based sub‐contractors and domestic workers. It argues that this is driven by workers’ heterogeneous access to and interaction with work and public space, which shaped how they experienced lockdowns, interacted with the state and other actors during the pandemic and perceived the risks of the pandemic. The article's findings highlight heterogeneous dynamics within the informal economy, which it refers to as the gendered geographies of work and movement, and how these can play a critical role in shaping responses to public health measures beyond the context of the informal economy.

Objective To examine the features of markets for loose cigarettes in several low-income and middle-income countries and their effects on tobacco control policies, particularly taxation. Design An analysis of survey data targeting people who smoke in two African, one Southeast Asian and two South Asian countries and retailers across 16 African countries to study loose cigarette markets and examine how prices in these markets move relative to the prices for cigarette packs. Results Markets for loose cigarettes are large, and their consumer base tends to differ from the wider population of people who smoke. Loose cigarette prices are on average higher than those of cigarettes bought in packs, and they respond differently to tax increases, at least partially due to a denomination effect. Conclusions The features of the loose cigarette markets present a challenge for tobacco control policy, especially tobacco tax policy. One way to overcome this challenge is to aim for large, rather than incremental, tax increases.

The concept of formalization has long underpinned policy interventions and measures intended to connect informal entities with state institutions or formal economic structures. However, despite the policy enthusiasm, the outcomes of formalization policies have frequently been disappointing. This article argues that this disconnect lies in the concept of formalization itself and that common approaches to formalization are often rooted in three conceptual fallacies: a binary distinction between formal and informal economic actors, a lack of appreciation for the diversity of informal economic actors and the idea that ‘becoming’ formal necessarily spurs positive externalities. These conceptual confusions pay insufficient attention to contextual complexity and the political and social dynamics that shape informality in a given context and they are frequently rooted in the practicalities and power structures that shape knowledge creation in this area. This article demonstrates this through case studies of tax registration and property titling. Thus, it argues for a new research agenda on formalization that challenges both its conventional conceptual foundations and the practices of research that engage with it.

In recent years, governments in low‐income countries have increasingly introduced taxes on mobile money transfers. These are often explicitly promoted as a way of taxing informal economic activity, but critics have noted their potential negative impact on lower income groups and specifically those in the informal sector. Yet there is virtually no evidence base on the effects of mobile money taxes on informal workers. This paper assesses how informal workers in Accra, Ghana, use mobile money and how they perceive Ghana's electronic transfer levy (E‐levy), introduced in May 2022. This provides a particularly interesting case study to explore the equity implications of the tax, as the policy was explicitly justified as a way of taxing the informal economy but also includes measures to limit the tax burden on lower income groups. The paper uses data from a survey of 2,700 self‐employed informal workers in the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to capture citizen perceptions of the policy and to examine the likely impact of the E‐levy on informal workers with reference to equity. Overall, our results suggest that the E‐levy is highly regressive. Further, we show that most informal workers disapprove of the E‐levy, reflecting not just concerns about its equity impacts, but also disappointment with the government's performance. Our findings suggest that taxes on digital financial services should be reconsidered from an equity perspective. While some policy measures, including those undertaken in Ghana, can protect low‐income earners, they are often insufficient to counteract overall regressive impacts. Where they are implemented, social spending from the revenue from these taxes should target low‐income populations in the informal economy, while governments should focus on building trust among informal workers with regard to revenue raising and spending.

What does research on informal sector workers and the state entail in the time of Covid-19? The pandemic has limited possibilities for in-person interactions and required adaptations in research approaches. These challenges are exacerbated when the subjects of the research are informal sector workers with limited access to technology and undefined spaces of work. In this article, we argue that the Covid-19 pandemic has magnified distances: between researchers located globally; between researchers and respondents; and between the state and people within informal employment. However, these distances also create new ways of working and opportunities for doing research. We discuss the challenges faced in the field, document the adaptations introduced to ensure robust research in difficult settings, and set out the limitations that remain. We also examine the ethical dimension of confronting dangerous misinformation related to the pandemic while conducting interviews, and the questions it raises about the distance between research and prescriptive advocacy in academia.

People with disabilities are often excluded from research, which may be exacerbated during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. This article provides an overview of key challenges, opportunities, and strategies for conducting disability-inclusive research during the pandemic, drawing on the experience of research teams working across ten countries on disability-focused studies. It covers adaptations that are relevant across the project lifecycle, including maintaining ethical standards and safeguarding; enabling active participation of people with disabilities; adapting remote research data collection tools and methods to meet accessibility, feasibility, and acceptability requirements; and promoting inclusive and effective analysis and dissemination. While this article is focused on adaptations during the pandemic, it is highly likely that the issues and strategies highlighted here will be relevant going forward, either in similar crises or as the world continues to move towards greater digital communication and connectedness.