This paper examines how African cities can reconcile rapid urbanization and development imperatives with urgent decarbonization goals through structural transformation. It begins by mapping key sources of urban carbon - energy poverty, inefficient buildings, poor planning, transport systems,...

This paper explores structural transformation in Harare, a city characterized by vertically divided authority. Harare's unique governance structure can offer invaluable insights into the role of political determinants in structural change in African cities. We aim to demonstrate how political...

Levels of interpersonal income inequality in African countries are much higher than they were long assumed to be. The literature on politics in sub-Saharan Africa says little about the redistributive pressures arising from this, other than to argue that class politics is rarely observed in...

Trade mis-invoicing represents a significant economic challenge in Ghana, with losses estimated at 3.03 per cent of gross domestic product in 2018. We examine the potential of a universal child benefit in Ghana through a counterfactual taxation of illicit financial flows. Using microsimulation,...

Recent developments in policy initiatives as well as some current practical events have combined to put the spotlight on the issue of industrial embeddedness in sub-Saharan Africa. Though extant research documents, some stylized facts, as determinants of its manifestations of their relevance to...

Electoral coalitions are becoming increasingly popular among opposition parties in Africa because they offer many advantages with respect to reducing party fragmentation and increasing incumbent turnovers. At the same time, however, they are often comprised of parties that are defined...

Do aid projects affect citizens' motivation to pay taxes? We address this question by combining fine-grained data on aid projects from AidData and survey data from the Afrobarometer for 34 African countries. We first employ a subnational analysis, where the treatment varies by administrative...

In recent decades, Africa has received a large share of official development assistance compared to other regions of the world. Using AidData for 2000-13, this paper examines the effects of aid to productive sectors on manufacturing growth in Africa. Econometric results show that increased...

There is limited research on the underlying institutional framework of tax policy and capacity: how tax collection efficiency changes over time and the importance of institutional factors in this process. This paper fills this gap by devising a measure of tax capacity distinct from commonly used...

This paper analyses the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in 2020 in a cross-country comparative perspective for five African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We first estimate the impact of the crisis on disposable...