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...
This article reviews the recent literature on the developmental effects of resource abundance, assessing likely effects and channels with respect to key development outcomes. To date, this area has received less analysis, although it is relevant to...
One of the most critical challenges in international development today is to understand how best to support peace, security, economic recovery, and...
Civil wars leave enduring legacies for social networks, political identities, preferences, and attitudes. Their impacts on public perceptions of peace...
Developing countries that experience commodity booms struggle to mobilize sustainable tax revenues. Emerging literature on the subject notwithstanding, there is limited exploration of the specific types of institutions critical for improving fiscal...
IntroductionThe literature on the concept, measurement, causes, and correlates of sub-national institutional governance is not new. From the seminal work of Putnam et al. (1993) to recent attempts by Iddawela et al. (2021), several authors have...
We examine the effects of randomly introduced economic inequality on voluntary cooperation, and whether this relationship is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption. We use representative data from a large-scale lab...
Sri Lanka, like the Nordic countries, is a social democratic nation with a strong welfare state. It is classified as a ‘high human development’...
This paper explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role of systemic political instability and violence...
Many practical and action-oriented international roadmaps to improve the quality of aid and its delivery and impact on development—including the Paris Declaration, Accra Agenda for Action, and Busan Partnership—emphasize a more active involvement of...
There are large volumes of gas offshore Tanzania, which has raised hopes of a boom. But those hopes look set to be disappointed. A boom would depend on there being a sizeable flow of revenue to government from producing and exporting gas. This paper...
A significant natural resource discovery creates excited popular expectations of imminent wealth. But the size of a boom is usually overestimated and the delay in receiving revenues is underestimated. This paper takes stock of the sequencing, timing...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal state capacity
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal state capacity
A growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first study of the long-term economic...
Launched in 2015 and completed in 2022, the Institutional Diagnostic Project aimed at identifying institutional factors that affect development...
We examine whether frontier rule, which disallows frontier residents from a recourse to formal institutions of conflict management and disproportionately empowers tribal elites, provides a more fragile basis for maintaining social order in the face...
The role of institutions in Asian development has been intensely contested since Myrdal’s Asian Drama, with later contributions from institutional economics and developmental state theory. Despite much progress, the dominant approaches do not agree...
This paper reviews the main methodological innovations in Asian Drama. It considers whether Myrdal’s perspectives have been adopted by development analysts, and where fresh thinking is needed, particularly in the light of changes occurring in the...
This paper discusses cultural barriers to women’s participation and success in the labor market in developing countries. I begin by describing how gender norms influence the relationship between economic development and female employment, as well as...
This paper studies the legacies of wartime institutions, measured as rebelocracy, on the ability of households to cope with negative income shocks. Rebelocracy is the social order established by non-state armed actors in the communities they control...
Effective and capable states are essential for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Such states can raise the necessary...
Part of Book The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa
With official development assistance under strain, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require developing countries to rely increasingly...
There is scant analysis on the causal relationship between fiscal capacity and social protection expenditure in the developing world. We investigate the causal relationship between fiscal capacity of the state and social protection expenditure...
This paper reviews the political economy of extractive resources and the associated resources sector governance agenda. The consensus that good sector governance improves the developmental impacts of extractive resources exploitation is premised on...
As a sovereign country, Mozambique initially relied on international solidarity and managed its donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed some loss of agency for the government as it allowed donors to challenge its capacity but never its...
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