To finance basic pro-poor services, the Government of Ghana must mobilize more public revenue. But tax reform has been highly controversial in Ghana. An attempt to introduce VAT in 1995 failed after widespread protests. Although a second attempt to introduce VAT in 1998 succeeded, strong resistance to tax reform remains, and the total tax base remains narrow and over-dependent on petroleum taxe...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t JEL classification: H77 H11 H71 R11 R58 Keywords: Fiscal federalism State and local taxation Intergovernmental relations Revenue First generation fiscal federalism (FGFF) studies the performance of decentralized systems under the assumption of benevolent social planners. Second generation fiscal federalism (SGFF) studies performance based on the fiscal and ...

This paper investigates fiscal sustainability in an overlapping generations economy with endogenous growth coming from human capital formation through educational spending. We assess how budgetary imbalances affect economic dynamics and the outlook for economic growth, thereby providing a rationale for fiscal rules ensuring sustainability. Our results show that the appropriate response of fisca...

It is widely believed that fiscal transparency has large and positive effects on fiscal performance. According to the IMF, “transparency in government operations is widely regarded as an important precondition for macroeconomic fiscal sustainability, good governance, and overall fiscal rectitude” (Kopits & Craig (1998, p. 1)). Indeed, both the IMF and the OECD are currently developing Codes of ...