We study an effective intervention into a specific form of bonded labor. The intervention led to a shift in agrarian contracts, from bonded labor to sharecropping. By comparing the pre- and post-liberation contracts we evaluate theoretical models of agrarian contracts. We suggest three...

The UN estimates that 20 million are held in bonded labor. Several economic analyses assert that bonded laborers accept these contracts voluntarily, which could imply that a ban would make such laborers worse off. We question the voluntary nature of bonded labor, discuss different theories and...

This paper analyses the business environment for micro enterprises in Tanzania based on survey data. The primary objective of the study is to identify major constraints facing the firms' business operations. Taxation, corruption, and regulations in the form of licences and permits, are found to...

UN estimate that 20 million are held in bonded labor. Several economic analyses assert that bonded laborers accept these contracts voluntarily, which could imply that a ban would make such laborers worse off. We question the voluntariness of bonded labor, and present a mechanism that keeps...

The growth of Africa's towns and cities has outpaced local authority capacity in terms of management, infrastructure, and financing. Many African towns and cities are now facing a governance crisis. Accordingly, the capability and capacity of urban local government to provide basic services to a...

This paper retests the analysis of "Aid Policy and Growth in Post-Conflict Societies," by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (October 2002 and forthcoming in European Economic Review). It finds that their data and analysis do not support their conclusions and policy recommendations on the optimal...

The anti-corruption reform in the Tanzanian tax bureaucracy in the mid-1990s was apparently a short-lived success. In the wake of the reform, a number of "tax experts" established themselves in the market, many of them being laid off tax bureaucrats. We argue that middle-men can undermine the...

Over the past two decades many developing countries have implemented comprehensive reforms of their tax administrations in order to increase revenue and curb corruption. This paper examines recent experiences in the fight against corruption in the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA). It argues that...

What are the responsibility of oil companies in resource rich countries? Do they take these responsibilities? Based on a utilitarian perspective and theories of the resource curse, we discuss the oil companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) when a resource rich country such as Angola...

A model of repeated play of a coordination game, where stage games have a location in social space, and players receive noisy signals of the true location of their games, is reviewed. Sugden (1995) suggests that in such a model, there can be a stationary state of convention coexistence only if...