Some studies have found that church attendance is negatively associated with economic growth and that belief in hell or heaven is positively associated with economic growth. The implication of this assertion is that 'believing rather than belonging' is what matters for economic performance as far as religion is concerned. Using logistic regression model on the data set of a metropolitan area, we have provided another evidence to further the empirical scholarship on the effect of religion on economic performance .We showed that church attendance perversely affects savings but belief may not matter significantly for savings decision of household after we have controlled for liquidity constraint, family ties and income uncertainty. We found that savings is negatively related to church attendance but belief in hell does not matter for household savings.

Purpose Improving tax compliance would drive the needed development in Ghana. Small and medium scale enterprises (SME) constitute a sizable proportion of the Ghanaian economy but its contribution to tax revenue is below expectation. This study aims to determine whether SME's perception of state legitimacy affects tax compliance. Design/methodology/approach A structured questionnaire was administered to 200 SMEs randomly drawn from Dodowa in the Shai-Osudoku District of Greater Accra Region. Descriptive statistics and the Probit model with sample selection were used to analyse the data. Findings The study found that SME's perception of government legitimacy exerts a significant negative effect on reducing profit to avoid tax liability (ß = −0.0305, p < 0.05). Other factors such as education and fear of fines and penalties were also found to reduce the likelihood that the firm would reduce profit to avoid high tax liability. Still, tax knowledge had a positive effect on this behaviour. Practical implications This study would help deepen policymakers' knowledge of how to improve tax compliance among SMEs in Ghana. Originality/value The originality of this work is that it explicitly models the role of fiscal exchange theory in explaining tax compliance among SMEs in Ghana by using robust methodology.

Religion is a key source of social capital for poverty reduction. This study used nationally representative data from households (N = 16,772) in Ghana to determine the association between religious affiliation and the incidence of poverty. Descriptive statistics, multilevel mixed‐effect logistic model and nearest neighbour matching estimator were used to analyse the data. We found that relative to the unaffiliated, except affiliation with Other Christian and Other religions, affiliation with Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal/Charismatic, Islam and Ahmadiyya is negatively associated with the incidence of absolute poverty. In urban areas, relative to those who belong to no religion, except affiliation with Other religions, affiliation with all the major religious denomination is negatively associated with the incidence of absolute poverty. The study also found that, compared to all other denominations, affiliation with Ahmadiyya and Catholic is positively associated with the incidence of poverty in Ghana. We concluded that in Ghana, religious affiliation reduces the odds of falling into poverty for those who live in urban areas, although some religious norms and values could expose households to poverty. The study recommends that the introduction of faith tax on religious denominations and conditional transfer programmes could help maximize the effect of religious affiliation on poverty reduction in Ghana.

There is by now enough evidence that Ghana relies to some extent on the use of seigniorage to finance its budget. This study however, further the empirical scholarship on the optimal path the economy follows in its use of seigniorage within two analytical models. We have provided evidence to reject Barro's (1979) tax-smoothing hypothesis. In the case of Ghana, there is no positive long run relationship between the tax rate and the rate of inflation. Additionally, following Andrabi (1997) game-theoretic model, we provide further evidence that seigniorage is not used optimally in the public finance scheme in the Ghanaian economy because in contrast to the prediction of the model, there is no significant positive relationship between seigniorage and transitory output. The implication of our finding is that the economy of Ghana appears to find itself on the wrong side of seigniorage maximizing revenue Laffer curve.

No abstract