This paper examines the potential role of civil society action in increasing state accountability for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It further develops the analytical framework of the World Development Report 2004 on accountability relationships, to emphasize the underlying political...

Not only do Africa's fragile states grow more slowly than non-fragile states, but they seem to be caught in a "fragility trap". For instance, the probability that a fragile state in 2001 was still fragile in 2009 was 0.95. This paper presents an economic model where three features -- political...

This paper proposes that, to increase the efficiency of public spending in oil-rich economies, some or all of the oil revenues be transferred to citizens, and fiscal instruments such as taxation be used to finance public expenditures. The authors develop the case as follows. First, they confirm...

Noting that South Africa may be one of the few African countries that could contribute to mitigating climate change, the authors explore the impact of a carbon tax relative to alternative energy taxes on economic welfare. Using a disaggregate general-equilibrium model of the South African...