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An important part of every country's development process is the building of a social contract in which citizens pay tax and, in turn, receive public goods and services. Evidence suggests that this is associated with the establishment of a norm of tax payment and a belief that non-payment is wrong. We exploit a new, nationally representative, dataset to explore which factors are associated with higher tax morale in Nigeria. We find that a perception of higher penalties and greater difficulty avoiding taxes are both associated with higher tax morale. Tax morale is also higher the more people believe that other Nigerians pay taxes, the less frequently they have to pay bribes and the greater the trust they have in tax officials. However, we also find that Nigerians who believe that tax officials discriminate in their treatment of different ethnic, religious and gender groups have higher, not lower, tax morale. And we find no relationship between service delivery and measures of tax morale based on the respondent's own behaviour, in contrast to the positive association found in the literature using broader measures of tax morale. This suggests that building a social contract based on taxation may be harder than previously thought.

Fuel subsidies in Nigeria are enormous – around USD 3.9 billion – almost double the health budget. Such subsidies come at great cost: the opportunity costs of such spending on other development objectives are large; the distribution of resources to the state governments is reduced; the vast majority of the subsidy goes to better off Nigerians; and cheaper petrol encourages greater pollution, congestion and climate change. Despite this, most Nigerians oppose the reduction of subsidies. We draw on a new nationally representative household survey that asked Nigerian men and women about their knowledge and attitudes towards subsidies. We construct and test a set of hypotheses about the factors associated with support for subsidy reform. We find that those who pay more or who experience less availability of fuel tend to support reform more. On the other hand, people who believe the Government is corrupt or lacks the capacity to implement compensation programs appear strongly opposed to reform. Finally, being religious and the delivery of reasonable national and local services also improves the acceptance of reform. These results support the idea that building a social contract is key to reform success.

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