Örebro Studies in Economics 31 I
ÖREBRO 2016 2016YE
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issn 1651-8896 isbn 978-91-7529-110-9Child Marriage, Human
Development and Welfare
Using Public Spending, Taxation and Conditional
Cash Transfers as Policy Instruments
Yeasmin saYeed
Economics
yeasmin sayeed is currently working as part-time consultant for UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, on the project ’The Economics and Politics of Taxation and Social Protection’. After suc-cessful completion of her Master’s programme in Economics and Econometrics (2008) at Örebro University, Sweden, she was appointed as a PhD student in economics and took a Philosophy of Licentiate degree in Economics in the year 2014 at the Örebro University School of Business, Sweden. Previously, Yeasmin Sayeed also studied Economics at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and took a Master’s degree in Social Science, majoring in Econo-mics, in the year 1999. Her main research interest is in development economics with a focus on public finance, welfare and gender issues.
This dissertation consists of four essays on financing human development (HD), tax reform and conditional cash transfer programmes, under the framework of growth and sustainable development. Essay one investigates the benefits and costs associated with alternative investment financing options for achieving HD goals for Bangladesh by applying the MAMS (Maquette for Millennium Development Goals Studies) model. Essay two analyzes the welfare impacts of different VAT reforms and shows that a broad-based VAT regime with a high threshold that excludes small-scale operators produces improved welfare for the low-income households. Essay three estimates the effect of a conditional cash transfer programme on girl’s schooling and age at marriage and provides evidence that the programme had impact on delaying marriage age of the tre-atment group. And finally, essay four proposes a methodology for estimating multiregional Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) from a national SAM by applying the cross-entropy method.
