The Revenues and Expenditures of African Governments: Modalities and Consequences

Like governments elsewhere, African governments raise revenues, employ workers and make expenditures. They do so in ways that reflect and affect the structure of their economies. Important interdependencies exist among revenues, employment and expenditures, and in more ways than the obvious one that expenditures have to be funded and require employees for implementation. Considerations include: the dependence of government revenues on export prices; the unimportance of the personal income tax; government wages relative to private sector opportunities; the role of education in altering the supply of government workers and their wages; and the effect of government expenditures on government revenues.