This paper shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil's state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies and institutions at all government levels,...

This paper investigates business tax compliance in a multilevel tax structure with limited coordination. We study the case of Kampala, where firms are taxed at national and local levels-by the Uganda Revenue Authority and the Kampala Capital City Authority, respectively-and where the agencies...

In this paper we use the new Government Revenue Dataset to analyse fiscal decentralization. We find that developed countries are on average more decentralized than developing countries and that Asia, Europe and North America are among the most fiscally decentralized regions. In our econometric...

In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana, and investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local public goods and services delivery by MMDAs. Using data from composite budgets of all 216 MMDAs, we...

In this study an attempt has been made to assess the potential of land as a municipal financing tool in four Indian cities, to enable better public service delivery and attainment of the MDGs. The institutional arrangements for land use are fragmented in India's cities between the urban...

Recent years have seen a proliferation of 'composite indicators' or 'indexes' of governance. Such measures can be useful tools for analysing governance, making public policy, building scientific knowledge, and even influencing ruling elites, but some are better tools than others and some are...

This paper critically examines the shortcomings of post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, arguing that an overemphasis on measurable results and causal inference led to overly narrow, community-driven development interventions that failed to appreciate the complex...

While it is recognized that effective state institutions are pivotal for economic development, it is not well understood what their origins are and what explains their cross-country differences. We focus on budget institutions in developing economies, as efficient public finance planning in such...

A well functioning system of public service delivery requires the definition and measurement of eligibility for services to be determined in a transparent and non-discretionary manner. This paper uses the case of the Productive Social Safety Net in mainland Tanzania to explore factors that...

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...