Using a sample of 34 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1990-2012, this paper reveals that health aid helps to improve health outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. More specifically, for each additional unit of health aid, the prevalence of HIV decreases by 8.3% and child mortality decreases by 64% over 4 years. This effect operates mainly through the improvement of female education and the increase in health spending. Furthermore, the results do not support the hypothesis of a significant difference between post-conflict states and stable states in terms of aid effectiveness.

Using data from the World Value Survey for the period 1981-2007, this paper shows that the level of trust is positively linked to the willingness to contribute to environmental goods in selected African countries. The results are robust to possible errors in measuring trust, to the presence of various controls, and the potential endogeneity bias. These findings complement and extend the existing literature in the sense that they provide evidence on the importance of trust in improving the collective management of natural resources in Africa.

Building on the literature of the political economy of taxation, this article explores the relationship between political competition and tax revenues using a sample of 89 developing countries from 1988 to 2010. Owing to the inertia of tax variables, we estimate a dynamic panel data model using the Blundell and Bond two‐step System‐general method of moments. The analysis led to the following results: political competition positively and significantly affects total tax revenues. However, this general pattern slightly differs across the type of taxes; and the net effect of political competition on tax revenues is negative for countries that have adopted fiscal rules. © 2018 UNU‐WIDER. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract:Using a sample of 28 sub-Saharan African countries during the period of 2000-2010, this paper examines the effect of health aid on health outcomes. After taking into account the endogeneity and using the instrumental variable approach, the results reveal that health aid improves health outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. More specifically, for each additional unit of health aid, life expectancy increases by 0.14, prevalence of HIV decreases by 0.05 and infant mortality decrease by 0.17. This effect operates mainly through the improvement of primary completion rate of female. However, the magnitude of the effects is too small if African countries would like to achieve MDGs through additional health aid.Furthermore, the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition indicates that differences in terms of the amount of health aid received do not explain the health outcomes gap between post conflict countries and stable countries. The relevant variables are governance and the female primary completion rate. The policy implications of the paper are further discussed.