Determinants of child mortality in Angola: An econometric analysis

The aim of this thesis is to investigate determinants of child mortality in the regions of Luanda and Uíge in Angola. The country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. The literature on the subject has found extensive variation in causes of death between and within countries, and knowledge on local conditions is a prerequisite for shaping sound and efficient policies addressing the problem. The analysis is conducted using data collected jointly by the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) and Centro de Estudos e Investigação Científica (CEIC) in 2010. In the descriptive analysis, I find large differences in infant and under-five mortality between wealth quintiles, education levels and households belonging to different public health facilities. In the econometric analysis, OLS, Poisson and binary logit models are estimated using both number of infant and under-five children dead as the dependent variable. The analysis puts particular emphasis on the effect of wealth, education, use and access to health services. While I find no effect of wealth, education, use and access to delivery services are found to be significant determinants of child mortality. All calculations and estimations are conducted using STATA version 11.1.ECON390MASV-SØ

Peoples’ Views of Taxation in Africa: a Review of Research of Determinants of Tax Compliance

What are the key determinants of taxpayer compliance? And which features of citizen-state relations govern attitudes and behaviour regarding taxation? This paper examines the analytical foundation, methodological approaches and key findings of available empirical literature on taxpayer behaviour in Africa. Understanding how citizens perceive and experience taxation may provide an essential diagnostic of the political realities for tax reform. Attempts to broaden the tax base require insights into how citizens experience and perceive the tax system, whether people perceive they are paying taxes or not, what they eventually pay, their views on tax administration and enforcement, and whether and how their tax behaviour is correlated with how they perceive the state. Attitude and perception surveys of current and potential taxpayers may also help to identify perceived weaknesses of the tax system, and enable tax authoritiesto focus attention efficiently on high-risk categories of taxpayers

The Customer is King: Evidence on VAT Compliance in Tanzania

Like governments in many other African countries, the Government of Tanzania has been striving to improve the effectiveness of its value added tax (VAT) regime by reducing tax evasion through a combination of measures, including improved tax legislation and more effective administrative processes. A key initiative was the introduction of Electronic Fiscal Devices (EFDs) in 2010. It was expected that the new technology would be beneficial to both the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) and business people by improving VAT compliance and reducing administrative and compliance costs. However, VAT collection has not improved as expected. In this paper, we examine EFD compliance among businesses that have an EFD and identify factors that influence compliance. An innovation in this study is that the research design allowed us to directly observe EFD usage, an important aspect of VAT compliance. Our enumerators waited for customers departing from business premises, and then checked their receipts, interviewed them and interviewed the businesses. This design enabled us to observe each business’s actual compliance in issuing EFD receipts, thus circumventing the problem of dishonest reporting, which is common in self-reported survey data. We find that EFD compliance is strongly associated with the customer’s perception of detection and penalty risks, and with the business operator’s perception of other businesses’ compliance behaviour.UKAIDBill and Melinda Gates Foundatio

Accountability and taxation: Experimental evidence

The Rentier State Hypothesis states that taxation promotes government accountability. The argument is that citizens demand more accountability for spending of tax revenue than for spending of windfall revenue (e.g., natural resource revenue). This paper presents evidence from a between-subject experiment that tests the effect of taxation on demand for accountability and the underlying mechanisms explaining this effect. The design focuses on two main features that distinguish tax from windfall revenue: Tax revenue is produced by citizens' work and has been in their possession before being collected as tax. These features are theorized to increase the salience of fairness considerations in public service provision, and this increased salience of fairness is in turn hypothesized to increase demand for accountability. The main finding is that taxation causes a higher demand for accountability when both features of taxation are present. This result is evidence in support of the Rentier State Hypothesis

Household Bargaining and Spending on Children: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

This paper studies whether an increase in women’s intrahousehold bargaining power causes couples to allocate more resources to their child’s education, and, if so, what the underlying mechanisms for this might be. We conduct a between-subject lab experiment with couples and vary the relative bargaining power between spouses. The paper provides two main insights. First, increasing the wife’s bargaining power improves gender equality in allocation to children’s education. However, it does not increase the amount invested in the child’s education. Second, we show that the difference in time preferences between spouses matters for how much the household invests in the child’s education. It benefits the child that the most patient spouse has more relative bargaining power. This implies that increasing the wife’s bargaining power may reduce the allocation to the child’s education if she is the less patient spouse. The results provide new insights into the current debate on female empowerment, and highlight the importance of incorporating a broader set of preferences in the analysis of intrahousehold decision-makingpublishedVersio

Household bargaining and spending on children: Experimental evidence from Tanzania.

It is frequently assumed that money in the hands of women leads to better out-comes for their children than money in the hands of men. However, empirical and theoretical evidence are mixed. We conduct a novel between-subject lab-in-the-field experiment to study whether increasing the wife's control over resources causes a couple to allocate more to their child. The paper provides two main insights. First, increasing the wife's bargaining power does not increase the share allocated to the child, but leads to more gender-equal allocations to children. Second, time preferences are important in explaining household decision-making; it is better for the child that the most patient spouse has more relative bargaining power. Our results highlight the importance of taking a broader set of preferences into account when studying household decision-making, and suggest that policy aimed to increase spending on children should target the spouse with preferences most aligned with such spending

Determinants of child mortality in Angola: An econometric analysis

The aim of this thesis is to investigate determinants of child mortality in the regions of Luanda and Uíge in Angola. The country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. The literature on the subject has found extensive variation in causes of death between and within countries, and knowledge on local conditions is a prerequisite for shaping sound and efficient policies addressing the problem. The analysis is conducted using data collected jointly by the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) and Centro de Estudos e Investigação Científica (CEIC) in 2010. In the descriptive analysis, I find large differences in infant and under-five mortality between wealth quintiles, education levels and households belonging to different public health facilities. In the econometric analysis, OLS, Poisson and binary logit models are estimated using both number of infant and under-five children dead as the dependent variable. The analysis puts particular emphasis on the effect of wealth, education, use and access to health services. While I find no effect of wealth, education, use and access to delivery services are found to be significant determinants of child mortality. All calculations and estimations are conducted using STATA version 11.1

Household Bargaining and Spending on Children: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

This paper studies whether an increase in women’s intrahousehold bargaining power causes couples to allocate more resources to their child’s education, and, if so, what the underlying mechanisms for this might be. We conduct a between-subject lab experiment with couples and vary the relative bargaining power between spouses. The paper provides two main insights. First, increasing the wife’s bargaining power improves gender equality in allocation to children’s education. However, it does not increase the amount invested in the child’s education. Second, we show that the difference in time preferences between spouses matters for how much the household invests in the child’s education. It benefits the child that the most patient spouse has more relative bargaining power. This implies that increasing the wife’s bargaining power may reduce the allocation to the child’s education if she is the less patient spouse. The results provide new insights into the current debate on female empowerment, and highlight the importance of incorporating a broader set of preferences in the analysis of intrahousehold decision-makin