This paper assesses the current state of evidence on the widely debated issue of the impact of trade policy reform on poverty in developing countries. There is relatively little empirical evidence addressing this question directly, but a lot of related evidence concerning specific aspects. This...

What is the level of state capacity in developing countries today, and what have been its drivers over the past century? We construct a comprehensive new dataset of tax and revenue collection for 46 African polities from 1900 to 2015. Descriptive analysis shows that many polities in Africa have...