Charles Kennedy, Honorary Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Kent at Canterbury, died from a pulmonary haemorrhage at his home on 4th November 1997, aged 74. This paper is an appreciation of his life and work.

This paper measures the tax effort of a sample of fifty-nine developed and developing countries over the period 1995-2015 by comparing a country's actual tax/GDP ratio with the ratio predicted derived from an international tax function which relates tax revenue to various measures of a country's...