This paper contributes to the literature on tax performance in sub-Saharan African countries. A standard model of the determinants of tax revenue is augmented to include measures of indigenous pre-independence institutional structure constructed from anthropological data on the characteristics...

There is a growing literature which analyses, using cross-country data, whether institutions or geography is the most important deep determinant of income per capita. The empirical proxies used for institutions in this literature, however, focus only on formal institutions, rather than informal...

By analysing the institutional structures of indigenous sub‐Saharan African groups, this paper aims to highlight the effect that these institutions may have had, and continue to have, on contemporary institutional performance. Using ethnographic and anthropological data sources a set of...