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Publications (36)
Working Paper
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The documented under-representation of marginalized groups in business ownership and the labour market is a concerning issue. This study explores how caste disparities in small-firm entrepreneurship impact on firm performance in India, focusing on the informal sector. Our examination shows a...
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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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Two well established stylized facts of economic development are a strong correlation between investment and income, and large differences in investment rates across countries. Construction is the largest component of investment. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in construction...
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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...
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
This special issue presents new research on the state and its links to economic and social development. The special issue focuses on the processes of institutional transformation of the state, looking at how fiscal states arise in the developing world.The resulting set of articles presents a variety...
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– An interpretative survey
When India became a republic in 1950, the economy was primarily agrarian, with three-fifths of output originating from agriculture. In the sixty years since independence, there has been a significant transformation of economic activity away from agriculture, with less than one-fifth of output now...
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– A general equilibrium analysis
The structure employed is a small open economy, with one city and a rural hinterland, two traded goods, a transport sector, two specific factors, and mobile labour. A socially profitable programme will promote not only internal, but also external trade. Theory and numerical examples indicate that...
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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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In recent decades, Africa has received a large share of official development assistance compared to other regions of the world. Using AidData for 2000–13, this paper examines the effects of aid to productive sectors on manufacturing growth in Africa. Econometric results show that increased...
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We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s foreign trade using quarterly trade data for the period 2019 to the second quarter of 2021. The exploratory analysis shows that growth of Kenya’s merchandise exports remained resilient, largely supported by traditional exports of tea and...
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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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The origins of fiscal capacity have traditionally been linked to warfare and democratization. However, non-democratic states also invest in fiscal capacity, even in times of peace. In fact, the majority of income taxes—a cornerstone of government finance—were introduced by non-democratic states in...
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– Formalization of property rights on land and tax revenues from individuals in sub-Saharan Africa
The arguments that property rights and taxation positively affect development are well established in separate literatures, but the link between property rights and taxation is under-studied.To address this gap, we theorize that formalization of individual property rights facilitates economic...
Displaying 16 of 36 results