Africa

The Institutional Diagnostic Project case study on Bangladesh and Mozambique is an attempt to explain the paradox of sustainability of the former and the disappointed hopes of the growth of the latter.

Outline of the presentation Objective, methodology and development of the project The synthesis volume and concluding chapters a) Identifying obstacles to development: economic perspective b) Identifying institutional obstacles: the role of politics c) Identifying institutional obstacles: state capacity and property…

Two central lessons can be drawn from the foregoing analysis. First, many institutional failures are traceable to the way politics functions. Therefore, any diagnosis or understanding of the impediments to a country’s long-term development that overlooks the country’s political economy…

After having examined the role of politics (in last chapter) in spurring or slowing down structural transformation and development, we are now ready to probe the issue of state capacity. This will complete our discussion of the role of governance-related…

In this chapter, the focus is on issues that involve politics. More specifically, we look at the role of political leadership and state autonomy in development. The institutions involved determine the quality of governance in a country, but they are…

This last part of the volume puts together the lessons learned from the in-depth case studies undertaken within the Institutional Diagnostic Programme (IDP), and the more cursory analysis of the success development stories of South Korea and Taiwan at about…

There are several reasons why development scholars should be interested in the case of Taiwan. As one author has written: ‘It once had a single dominant party following the Leninist model; it now has a competitive multiparty system. It was…

‘What would have been the conclusion of an institutional diagnostic of the development potential of South Korea conducted in the mid- or late-1970s, at a time when the country was still a low-income country, at roughly the same income level…

There are several reasons why Benin is an interesting country to study, and some of them have no doubt contributed to making it an aid darling for many donors. First, although it is made up of an extraordinarily varied mosaic…

At the core of the institutional diagnostic project is the idea that we can gain more knowledge about the role of institutions by undertaking in-depth country case studies than by carrying out broad quantitative exercises based on a large sample…

The preceding chapter defined the objective of the institutional diagnostics of each particular country and made explicit the concepts and analytical principles that need to be mobilised in order to conduct such an exercise. By providing a short description of…

The ‘institutions matter’ slogan appears today as a fundamental truth about development. Widely shared by the development community, including international organisations, it goes with the idea that the benefits of both market operations and state interventions are significantly conditioned by…

If there is absolutely no doubt that institutions matter for development, and for development policies and strategies in the first place, the crucial issue is knowing how they matter. After all, impressive economic development achievements have been observed despite the…

Following decades of colonialism and a violent political history, Uganda has reached a state of relative stability and economic growth.  The Ugandan decentralization reform initiated in 1992 is exceptional among developing countries in terms of the scale and scope of…

Markets in low-income countries often display long tails of inefficient firms and signicant misallocation. This paper studies Rwandan coffee mills, an industry initially characterized by widespread inefficiencies that has recently seen a process of consolidation in which exporters have acquired…

We develop an approach to understand the role of autocratic land reforms to prevent democratic change. The autocrat confiscates and redistributes land in an attempt to secure his power, exploiting the endogenous social identities and loyalty in the population. The…

Political selection can be crucial to the quality of governance. Yet our general knowledge of the individual characteristics that determine who becomes a politician remains scant – primarily due to data limitations. Dal Bo and Finan (2018) emphasize how the…

This report summarizes an ongoing study of the effect of teacher rotation on student outcomes in Uganda. In the status quo, teachers are transferred (“rotated”) across schools at the discretion of district authorities. In randomized treatment schools, we incentivize teachers…

Land reform in Zimbabwe is a dramatic example of how the issue of agricultural land distribution governs a country’s political and economic development over several decades. Zimbabwe first experienced 20 years of moderate redistribution that eventually moved to a phase…

Ugandan policy mandates periodic re-assignment of teachers between schools. We study whether rewarding high-performing teachers with posting to a preferred school improves teacher attendance, effort, and student performance. We find no effect on student and teacher outcomes. Results suggest that…

It is widely accepted that there are persistent performance differences (PPDs) among seemingly similar enterprises (Syverson, 2011). These differences are not only documented in developed markets (Syverson, 2004) but also in developing countries where they tend to be more pronounced…

This paper provides micro evidence for one mechanism behind the dramatically different political responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, namely how an increase in the perceived risk of Covid-19 among individuals stemming from past exposure to similar health crises generates citizen demand for containment measures.

Developing economies are characterized by limited compliance with government regulation, such as taxation. Resources for enforcement are scarce, but the increasing availability of digitized data and data processing technologies have the potential to improve the targeting of enforcement. Levering an…

MOZAMBIQUE INSTITUTIONAL DIAGNOSTIC Chapter 9: The saga and limits of public financial management: The Mozambican case Abstract: At independence in 1975, the Frelimo government took over public administration from the colonial system and started to transform it. The public financial…

MOZAMBIQUE INSTITUTIONAL DIAGNOSTIC Chapter 4. The relative neglect of agriculture in Mozambique Abstract: This paper explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role…

We examine how trust shapes compliance with public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda. We use an endorsement experiment embedded in a mobile phone survey to show that messages from government officials generate more support for public health…

Why do more small firms in developing countries not use the market for professional business services like accounting, marketing, and human resource specialists? Two key reasons may be that firms lack information about the availability of these services, and that…

Information barriers can prohibit trade. This paper empirically documents the existence of business-to-business information sharing between small firm traders in Lagos, Nigeria. Sharing information about availability of new products and styles is more common than sharing information about actual suppliers…

Abstract: This document is the second of two progress reports that provide an overview of the progress made on the DFID RA4 project “Social structures, political accountability, and effective public goods provision.” Our study is interested in better understanding how…

Abstract: This paper reports on a two-tiered experiment designed to separately identify the selection and effort margins of pay-for-performance (P4P). At the recruitment stage, teacher labor markets were randomly assigned to a pay-for-percentile or fixed-wage contract. Once recruits were placed,…

Abstract: International donors and governments require contracting mechanisms that provide accountability in order to mitigate leakage and corruption in public infrastructure projects, especially when construction is outsourced to private sector contractors. This is an important goal because low-income countries spend…

Abstract: Property taxes are in theory easy to enforce in their simplest form due to their tangible tax base, and are considered an equitable means to raise revenue in low-income countries. In spite of these features, African countries, where cities…

Reducing crime and improving personal and communal security are crucial policy goals. The task of achieving these goals naturally falls first and foremost on a country’s police force.There is a widespread consensus that police forces are most effective in preventing…

Experimental evidence from Ghana’s civil service Abstract: Organizational culture is an important driver of organizational performance, but evidence on how to improve performance-oriented organizational cultures is scarce – especially in the public sector. We partnered with Ghana’s Civil Service to…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 13: Synthesis and policy recommendations We now proceed to bringing together the different elements of previous chapters with the aim of presenting the essence of this country study of Mozambique. In the next section, we take…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 12: Natural resources, institutions, and economic transformation in Mozambique Abstract: In the light of Mozambique’s natural resources boom—especially its large-scale investments in mining, oil, and gas—this paper analyses the prospects for the extractive industries to contribute…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 11: Donor relations and sovereignty Abstract: As a sovereign country, Mozambique initially relied on international solidarity and managed its donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed some loss of agency for the government as it allowed donors…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 10: Rule of law and judicial independence Abstract: The rule of law and judicial independence are a project yet to be achieved in Mozambique. The different attempts made so far to reform the legal system, mainly…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 8: Decentralization reforms in Mozambique The role of institutions in the definition of results Abstract: With the introduction of the economic reforms in the late 1980s, the opening up of the political arena and the end…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 7: Health, development, and institutional factors The Mozambique case Abstract: The central aim of this text is to show the impact institutions have on the performance of the health sector in Mozambique. The text shows that…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 6: The education sector in Mozambique From access to epistemic quality in primary education Abstract: From the early days of national independence in 1975, the central aim of the educational policy in Mozambique has been to…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 2. Historical, political and economic background Few countries have experienced as many extreme political and economic changes as Mozambique both before and after independence in 1975. ‘The combined legacies of colonialism, idealism, socialism, war fueled by…

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 1: Introduction and overview Authors: Ines A. Ferreira and Finn Tarp

Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic Foreword and Acknowledgements Authors: António S. Cruz, Ines A. Ferreira, Johnny Flentø and, Finn Tarp

Developing, maintaining, and using tax records to boost revenue. Tax revenue funds the provision of public goods, but poor countries struggle to raise taxes. In fact, as shown in the figure above, low income countries (LICs) raise only half as much tax…

In many countries the Covid-19 virus spread from the roving rich to the stationary poor. In South Africa, for instance, the virus seems to have been imported from abroad by travelers from the upper class and was then transferred to…

Empirical Evidence from the Community Health Worker Program in Sierra Leone Authors:  Erika Deserranno, Northwestern University, and Philipp Kastrau and Gianmarco León-Ciliotta, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Introduction:  Poor performance of frontline service providers (e.g., teachers, health workers, tax collectors) has generated…

Abstract: Are ordinary citizens or political party leaders better positioned to select candidates?  While the American primary system lets citizens choose, most democracies rely instead on party officials to appoint or nominate candidates.  The consequences of these distinct design choices…

Authors: François Bourguignon, Paris School of Economics, and Samuel Wangwe, Economic and Social Research Foundation

Abstract: This paper studies the land property rights of married women using a diagnostic survey on women’s land property rights and Village Councils in rural Tanzania (VI-LART). Women own little property independently of their husbands. This puts them at particular…

Abstract: Research on innovation in government often focuses on ideas introduced by senior leaders or managers, but ideas from public servants themselves are an important and underexplored channel for improving performance in government bureaucracies. We provide new evidence on the…

Abstract: This paper investigates how social norms related to land conversion may evolve to accommodate greater scarcity, by taking advantage of data collected in the Equateur Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as historical events that introduced…

This EDI Research Insight publishes early stage results from a study designed to explore questions about  representation, accountability and performance among government officials in Sierra Leone. As in many developing countries, in Sierra Leone the process of selecting candidates often…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. Based on the descriptive analysis of the economic, social, and political context in the first part of this volume, and the various thematic studies in the second part, this final chapter…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. Summary of contents: 1 Introduction 2 Historical economic relations between Benin and Nigeria 3 Causes of informal trade: Nigeria’s pervasive distortions incentivise smuggling 4 Magnitude of entrepôt trade between Benin and…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. This chapter deals with the issue of land tenure, which has been identified by the research coordinators as one of the major institutional problems in Benin. It deals more specifically with…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. Abstract: Using a database providing information on tax revenue over the period 1980–2015, covering 42 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, we analyse the efforts by Benin to raise tax revenue, in regard…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. Contents: 1 Introduction 2 Analytical framework 2.1 Organisation of the cotton sector 2.2 External factors 2.3 Domestic factors 3 Historical background of cotton in Benin: 1641-1960 3.1 Pre-colonial period to 1949:…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. This chapter uses a novel database on contractual arrangements between politicians, political brokers, and businessmen in Benin to investigate the way the nature of these arrangements depends on the level of…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. This chapter aims to identify the institutional areas that most constrain Benin’s economic development, relying on expert opinion as it appears in databases that provide international comparisons of institutional and related…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. This chapter is the second part of the overview of institutional and other constraints on the development of Benin. While the first chapter focused on the geographical, historical, social, and political…

This publication is part of the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. This chapter, Chapter 1, constitutes the first part of a two-step overview of institutional and other constraints on the development of Benin. It looks at the context in which Benin’s development…

François Bourguignon provides a brief introduction to the five thematic studies undertaken for the Benin Institutional Diagnostic.

This introductory chapter the the Benin Institutional Diagnostic provides a contextual overview to the publication under five main topics: ‘Institutions matter’ How institutions matter in development policy today Searching for evidence on the quality of institutions and development Institutional diagnostic…

How effectively are government bureaucracies managed? How much variation is there in management practices across organizations? These are basic questions about the day-to-day bureaucratic processes of governance on which little systematic evidence exists, especially in low- and middle-income countries. And…

Laura Torvinen offered insights in response to the question, “What are the institutional bottlenecks to development?” in a panel discussion for the Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic (MID) launch workshop on 12 June in Maputo. (This presentation is in Portuguese.) The Launch…

Magid Osman and Jorge Ferrão offered insights on the question, “What are the institutional bottlenecks to development?” in a panel discussion for the Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic (MID) launch workshop on 12 June in Maputo. (This presentation is in Portuguese.) The…

Finn Tarp provided background information and data in a session at the workshop to launch the Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic (MID) study on 12 June in Maputo. (This presentation is in Portuguese.) The Launch Workshop brought together key people from policymakers…

François Bourguignon provided an introduction and overview in a workshop to launch the Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic (MID) study on 12 June in Maputo. The Launch Workshop brought together key people from policymakers to representatives of the private sector, civil society,…

The Mozambique Institutional Diagnostic (MID) study officially started in February 2019 under a contract with the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen, in coordination with activities supported by DERG and UNU-WIDER in Mozambique. The methodology for…

Land ownership and inheritance rights play a critical role for gender equity, and the land-poverty nexus has drawn considerable attention both in academia and policy circles. This EDI Research Insight highlights key findings from research designed to build an understanding…

Inequality in access to land is often considered symptomatic of larger inequalities of opportunities in rural societies. Yet little is known about land access inequality in frontier settings where property rights have not fully transitioned from open access through communal…

Benin Institutional Diagnostic This publication is the first draft of an introductory chapter for the Benin Institutional Diagnostic. To see the final versions of all publications arising from this study, visit our Benin Institutional Diagnostic overview. Chapter 1: A first…

Kate Casey of Stanford University presents research to date from the project on “Politician entry, selection and performance in Sierra Leone.” How do political parties choose candidates who run in the general elections Political party have regional geographic strongholds, which…

Andrew Zeitlin from Georgetown University presents his research on the compositional consequences of performance pay in the education sector in Rwanda. H notes that in developing country education there is tremendous variation in teacher quality and internationally, these differences have…

Gianmarco León on pay-for-performance (P4P), which has been shown to be effective in job performance in both private and public organizations. The research examines how incentives affect performance when they are implemented across multiple layers of an organization – from…

Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley presents research on “The political economy and governance of rural electrification in Kenya.” In the last few years it has become a major policy and foreign aid priority to enhance the…

Michael O’ Sullivan from the World Bank presents research on “Relaxing credit constraints and tenure insecurity in imperfect markets.” The project motivation arises from recognition that in the absence of well-functioning markets for land, credit and insurance, farming households are…

Virginia Nelder, from the Kenya Law Reform Commission, presents her research on “Access to justice in Kenya’s magistrates’ courts: Judicial systems as public goods.” The project she presents aims to provide the research necessary to make evidence-based policy and legislative…

Justine Knebelmann from the Paris School of Economics presents her research on a project undertaken in collaboration with the Senegalese tax administration. She reviews the motivations for research on the property tax regime, and examines how technological improvements in the…

Pierre Bachas from the World Bank presents on his EDI-funded research in Senegal on how to audit populations when there is limited government capacity. This presentation was part of a larger convening workshop for EDI, “Sharing Solutions, Sharing Strategies: A…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 8: Synthesis This chapter provides a synthesis of information and arguments developed in the first seven chapters of the Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic. Chapter outline Part 1.  The basic institutional constraints on Tanzanian development The main challenges…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 7: Power Sector Chapter outline Introduction The Tanzanian power sector: structure and performance Institutional structure Power sector performance The Tanzanian power sector’s institutional development Early institutional infrastructure in the power sector – the colonial period From…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 6: Land Rights Chapter outline Overview A brief historical perspective on land tenure issues Legal land tenure in Tanzania according to the 1999 Land Act Rights of occupancy Land transformation by the state and the issue…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 5: Decentralization and development Chapter outline Introduction The theory of central–local government relationships The evolution of local government in Tanzania Local and central governance in Tanzania today: a complex and confusing legal framework Fiscal decentralisation: the…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 4: Civil Service Chapter outline Introduction The role and political context of the civil service in economic development The transitional phase, 1961–66 The socialist phase, 1967–85 The liberalisation phase, 1986 to date Constraints to effective civil…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 3: Politics and business Chapter outline Introduction Theoretical framework and methodology The early independence period: 1961–66 The situation at independence Origins of the position of Asians Development initiatives in early post-independence period Continued concern over social…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 2: Tanzanian institutional strengths and weaknesses Chapter outline Introduction The Country Institutional Survey (CIS): experts’ opinions on Tanzanian institutions The survey: design of the questionnaire Execution of the survey Most critical institutions for the development of Tanzania…

Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic Chapter 1: Reflections on the political and economic development of Tanzania Chapter outline A short account of the political history of Tanzania The colonial era The German colonisation The British mandate on Tanganyika Independence Forging a nation: the…

François Bourguignon and Sam Wangwe provide an introduction to the analysis produced for the Tanzania Institutional Diagnostic. The authors outline three approaches have been developed to identify the institutional factors hindering development or ways of remedying specific factors: historical case studies;…

A presentation by Andrew Zeitlin, Georgetown University This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

“Relaxing credit and tenure security constraints: Credit and land titling in Uganda” A presentation by Michael O’Sullivan (with contributions from Maitreesh Ghatak, Markus Goldstein, James Habyarimana, Joao Montalvao, Christopher Udry) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by…

A presentation by Gianmarco León (with Erika Deserrano and Philipp Kastrau) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Edward Miguel, University of California, Berkeley This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Justine Knebelmann, Paris School of Economics This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Kate Casey, Stanford GSB This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

A presentation by Pierre Bachas (World Bank Research) This presentation was part of the convening event hosted by CEGA at the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2018. Read a summary of the event.

This document provides an outline of the methodology and research process for the Benin Institutional Diagnostic.