Working Paper
Mining’s contribution to low- and middle-income economies
In several low- and middle-income countries with important extractive sectors, gross national income has developed favourably. Africa has benefitted most, particularly West Africa. This survey provides an up-to-date statistical analysis of the...
Working Paper
Domestic revenue mobilization and informality
Effective domestic revenue mobilization has gained renewed urgency, especially in the light of the need to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In taxation debates, the ‘informal sectors’ have hitherto been assumed to be a part of the problem and...
Working Paper
A fiscal approach to the social contract in sub-Saharan African countries
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that many developing countries could not respond effectively to crises due to their limited capacity to diversify their social protection responses. Social protection systems depend mainly on government tax revenue...
Working Paper
Tax and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa
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...
Journal Article
The dynamic effects of aid and taxes on government spending
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...
Working Paper
Social protection expansions during crisis and fiscal space
This study provides a first attempt to contribute a large-scale assessment of whether crisis response as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic can serve as a feasible blueprint for creating durable solutions across countries. Adopting a lens on...
Working Paper
Fiscal consequences of corporate tax avoidance
Multinational corporations shift a large share of their foreign profits to tax havens and, due to this corporate tax avoidance, governments worldwide lose a portion of their tax revenues. In this paper we study the consequences of multinational tax...
Working Paper
Does aid fragmentation affect tax revenue dynamics in developing countries?
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...
Working Paper
Aid, taxes, and government spending
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...
Working Paper
Good institutions and tax revenue outcomes in resource-rich countries
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...
Technical Note
Government Revenue Dataset (2021): country notes
This technical note is the third in a series based on the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset (GRD). The preceding notes have described in detail the variables contained within the GRD and the source selection procedures. In this technical note, we...
Working Paper
Constraints on the executive and tax revenues in the long run
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...