Revenue Mobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges from Globalization

By Mario Mansour, Michael Keen. Social Science Research Network, 2009

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper evaluates the nature and extent of, and possible responses to, two of the central challenges that globalization poses for revenue mobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): from corporate tax competition, and from trade liberalization. It does so using a new dataset with features needed to meaningfully address these issues: a distinction between resourcerelated and other revenues, and a disentangling of tariff from commodity tax revenue. Countries' experiences vary quite widely, nonresource revenues have been essentially stagnant. Corporate tax revenues have held up, despite a reduction in rates and evidence of substantial base-narrowing-something of a puzzle-and trade tax revenue reductions have been largely offset by other measures. Options for dealing with the continuation and intensification of the challenges, which the present crisis is likely to accelerate-including through regional cooperation-are discussed.

Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/14c3bdc875f785b74e959a188b62ecb94f11ed8e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Accounting

1. A. Barrientos
2. W. Prichard
3. A. Goodall
4. Alex Cobham

In Economics and Econometrics

1. A. Barrientos
2. Miguel Niño-Zarazúa
3. W. Prichard
4. A. Goodall
5. Alex Cobham
6. D. Hulme
7. S. Hickey

Citations in the corpus

• Social Protection in Sub-Saharan Africa: Getting the Politics Right (2012, background): “Revenues from the exploitation of natural resources were beginning to reach levels that could support a measure of optimism regarding the fiscal space for the extension of social protection (Keen & Mansour, 2009).”
• The ICTD Government Revenue Dataset (2014, methodology): “7 Structure of tax classification for Keen and Mansour (2009)   50 A2.”
• Empirical evidence on the effects of tax incentives (2009, unknown): “The shorter average tax holidays may seem surprising, given recent evidence of further spreading of tax holidays in Sub-Saharan Africa (Keen and Mansour, 2008).”