Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/249494 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2021/188
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
The paper examines the legacy of pre-colonial centralization on tax compliance norms of citizens in contemporary Uganda. By combining geo-referenced anthropological data on precolonial ethnic homelands with survey data from several rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey, respondents from the historically centralized homelands are found to exhibit a higher willingness to pay tax compared to respondents from non-centralized areas. The result holds for the whole sample and in the regression discontinuity analysis on individuals who reside close to the borders of neighbouring ethnic homelands with different levels of pre-colonial centralization. The stronger norm for tax compliance in pre-colonial centralized homelands is explained by the legacy of location-specific factors related to the level of capacity that historically centralized states had in upholding authority and not through the legacy of better-quality local institutions.
Subjects: 
tax compliance
pre-colonial centralization
Uganda
JEL: 
H26
N47
O12
O23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-128-0
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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