Sub-Saharan Africa's air transport, though low in overall volume when compared to other regions in the world, has experienced significant growth in the last decade, both in international and domestic traffic. The sector, in part because of its relatively small size, still faces the challenges of...

Efficient transport links are critical to enhancing the integration of markets in Southern Africa. This paper assesses the structure of markets, competition, and prices and costs of road transportation between urban hubs in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Key findings are...

Rapid urbanization and rising income levels in Southern Africa have increased the consumption of perishable and processed food products. This paper relies primarily on firm-level interview data to assess competition and bottlenecks in transporting time-sensitive perishable products across...

Recent years have seen a growing interest among donors on taxation in developing countries. This reflects a concern for domestic revenue mobilization to finance public goods and services, as well as recognition of the centrality of taxation for growth and redistribution. The global financial...

This paper combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity. We show that information capacity contributes to the development of fiscal capacity. States require...

There is a widespread perception that taxing in sub-Saharan Africa has been and remains fraught with problems or government failure. This is not generally true. For more than a century, colonial administrations and independent states have steadily developed the capacity to routinely collect more...

This paper investigates the sources of variability in the mobilization of domestic tax revenue in oil-producing countries. It argues that the type of natural resources exploited during colonial rule can affect the contemporary levels of domestic tax revenue in oil countries. We test this...

How does conflict affect tax revenue mobilization? This paper uses a newly updated dataset to explore longitudinal trends of tax revenue mobilization prior to, during, and after conflict periods in a selection of conflict-affected states since 1980. This medium-N trend analysis is complemented...

Changes in the tax structure and category of taxes clearly matter when it comes to initiating tax policies. This paper employs data from a sample of 33 transitional countries over the period 1991-2014. It finds that, in a particular transitional country, the higher the national income, the...

Robust forecasting of mining sector revenues is key to effective budgeting (and broader fiscal management) in many resource-rich countries. However, this is challenging in practice, given commodity market volatility, the extended lags (and often opaque processes) between resource discoveries and...