Abrams M.E. Tagem is a Research Associate at UNU-WIDER. He holds a PhD in Economics and a master’s degree in Economic Development and Policy Analysis, both from the University of Nottingham, UK. He is an empirical development economist, with interests at the nexus of research, policy analysis and practice in taxation. Prior to his appointment at UNU-WIDER he was a public finance consultant with the World Bank.
At UNU-WIDER, his primary research focus on the role of effective and accountable institutions on taxation in developing countries, as well as other aspects influencing taxation. He is the research focal point for the GRD – Government Revenue Dataset and his research has been published in journals such as International Tax and Public Finance, Journal of Institutional Economics, South African Journal of Economics, among others.
This article examines the impact of foreign aid and taxes on government spending for 67 developing countries during 1980–2013 using dynamic heterogeneous (panel) time-series techniques. We find that spending, aid and tax ratios comprise an...
The annual WIDER Development Conference held this year in Oslo concentrated on domestic revenue mobilization (DRM). The 2.5-day hybrid event...
Double taxation treaties, by assigning taxing rights to rival countries and thereby eradicating double taxation, aim to facilitate cross-border trade and investment. The eradication of double taxation is achieved through reductions in withholding tax...
Taxation can contribute to state-building through a tax bargain in which taxpayers are willing to increase compliance in return for improved government accountability. There is limited evidence for this in sub-Saharan Africa where it is argued that...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal state capacity
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal state capacity
This paper establishes how accountability quality might mediate the effect of tax revenue on sustainable development in 41 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1990–2019. The empirical evidence is based on three empirical strategies...
Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) and taxation have gained prominence lately on the global agenda, most recently with the resolution for the United...
A substantial amount of aid to developing countries is given to the government, or goes through the budget, meaning it should have an impact on government fiscal behaviour (particularly on government spending). The few existing empirical studies on...
There exists a burgeoning empirical literature on the impact of aid fragmentation on development outcomes in aid-receiving countries, with it being widely recognized that aid fragmentation is deleterious. This paper adds to the existing literature by...
African countries raise lower amounts of tax as a share of national income (GDP) than other countries. Researchers are interested in understanding why...
A few months ago, I was asked to deliver a lecture at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies on the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue...
We argue that tax revenues and political institutions placing constraints on the executive power may reinforce each other over time and so co-evolve in the long run. This may also bring a shift in the composition of revenues, from taxes levied on a...
Attention on domestic resource mobilization—particularly in developing countries—has increased significantly in recent years. This stems from, among other things, recognition in the Sustainable Development Goals that further domestic funding is...
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...
The socioeconomic fallout from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore discussions on domestic resource mobilization (hereafter DRM)...
The main argument of this paper is that there is considerable heterogeneity in the way aid can shape tax performance in developing countries: through behavioural effects, donor conditionality, recipient policy reform and technical assistance; and...
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