The past two decades have witnessed widespread attempts to reform tax structures in developing countries. As the relatively small formal sector limits the base for taxes on income, the major reform is to replace trade taxes with sales taxes. To the extent that this has involved rationalisation...

Although growth has improved substantially in most African countries in recent years, poverty across the continent has fallen very little in the aggregate. There have been strong poverty reduction performances in some countries, but others exhibit higher poverty rates now than in 1990 despite...