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Publications (25)
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– Temporary bandages to permanent wounds?
This paper provides a contextual analysis of the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. First, we outline the historical context and the political situation of the period 2019–24 that serve as context for the passage and implementation of the Bitcoin law (Decree No. 57). We identify the...
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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 the fiscal state is weak, with low tax revenues and...
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– The case of Ghana
One essential condition of economic progress in any society is an ample supply of savings, which depends on the growth of real capital.Economists agree that higher investment rates will lead to higher growth. Thus, domestic savings is considered an important determinant of growth in developing...
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– Unity in diversity
This paper examines the national savings behaviour in the process of economic growth through a comparative analysis of countries in developing Asia from a historical perspective. Developing Asia provides an ideal laboratory for the study with considerable differences in the savings behaviour among...
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– Empirical evidence
This paper examines trends and determinants of gross domestic savings in Tanzania using data for the period 1990–2020. The autoregressive distributed lag approach is employed to empirically analyse the short-run and long-run relationships. There has been a fairly stable increase in the domestic...
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– Do sovereign wealth funds serve development?
Do sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) contribute to Africa’s development? This paper assesses the objectives of SWFs (fiscal stabilization, productive investment, intergenerational saving) and discusses alternatives. We argue that fiscal stabilization funds are often necessary, but entail considerable...
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The savings–growth nexus is widely acknowledged, both in policy and in the literature. But Kenya’s numerous policy initiatives to encourage savings mobilization are yet to yield the expected outcomes. This paper identifies the key drivers of domestic saving in Kenya, exploiting fintech as an...
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Capital markets facilitate capital growth by mobilizing savings and converting them into investments, and they are therefore a stimulant of economic growth. There is evidence that countries with high savings rates tend to grow faster. Although most sub-Saharan Africa countries recognize the...
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This paper traces the development of fintech in sub-Saharan Africa, its evolution over time, and the unfolding benefits attained at each stage of its adoption and market evolution. From the onset, fintechs have revolutionized retail electronic payment systems—a revolution that has evolved into a...
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The population structure the world over is going through a demographic shift, and the elderly proportion is projected to increase with population growth. This change is a matter of concern for sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, where the majority of the people are young and the rates of both...
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This paper employs data from 103 developing countries between 1981 and 2012 to examine the determinants of private savings in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with a focus on the effect of financial liberalization on private savings. It also analyses why the savings rate for SSA countries is lower than for...
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– Lessons from 19th-century America and 21st-century China
How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states—exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England—paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and subsequent...
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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 narrow base to broadly levied taxes.To test these...
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The paper examines the legacy of pre-colonial centralization on tax compliance norms of citizens in contemporary Uganda. By combining geo-referenced anthropological data on pre-colonial ethnic homelands with survey data from several rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey, respondents from the...
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This paper contributes to the debate on domestic revenue mobilization and state-building in the Global South by asking whether there are fiscal states in sub-Saharan Africa. To answer this question, we review the diverse understandings of the fiscal state across relevant literatures and explore...
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– On the role of legibility in tax state development
This paper combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity.We show that information capacity contributes to the development of fiscal capacity. States require...
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