Wilson Prichard

Associate Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

CEO, International Centre for Tax and Development / Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI)

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wilson.prichard@utoronto.ca

sites.google.com/site/wilsonprichard/

Observatory
315 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 0A7 Canada

Areas of interest

International Development, Sub-Sahara Africa
Comparative politics, International Political Economy, and Economics
Taxation, Government Revenues, State Building and Accountability
Aid Reform
Tax Havens and International Tax Reform
Political Foundations of Development

Biography

Main Bio

Wilson Prichard is Associate Professor of Global Affairs and Public Policy and of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Chair of the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) and Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). He was previously founding Research Director, and then Executive Director, of the ICTD.

His work focuses on the political economy of tax reform in lower-income countries, with a particular focus on strategies to support successful sub-national revenue collection in sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author of Taxation, Responsiveness and Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Taxing Africa (Zed Books, 2018) – named a Foreign Affairs best book of 2019 –, Innovations in Tax Compliance: Building Trust, Navigating Politics and Tailoring Reform (World Bank, 2022) and a variety of academic articles.

He regularly engages with governments, donors and civil society about the design of tax reform programs, and how to strengthen links between revenue raising and public benefits, including having led the design and implementation of innovative and successful property tax reform programs in Sierra Leone, and supporting reform planning and design in more than a dozen other countries.

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Books

Prichard, Wilson, Anna Custer, Roel Dom and Stephen Davenport. 2022. Innovations in Tax Compliance: Building Trust, Navigating Politics and Tailoring Reform. Washington D.C.: World Bank
Moore, Mick, Wilson Prichard, and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad. 2018. Taxing Africa: Coercion, Reform and Development. African Arguments. London: Zed Books.
Prichard, Wilson. 2015. Taxation, Responsiveness, and Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Dynamics of Tax Bargaining. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Articles

Henn, Soeren, Laura Paler, Wilson Prichard, Cyrus Samii and Raul Sanchez de la Sierra. Forthcoming. “Seeing Like a Citizen: Experimental Evidence on How Empowerment Affects Engagement with the State”. American Journal of Political Science.
Prichard, Wilson, Samuel Jibao and Nicholas Orgeira. 2025. “Sub-national property tax reform and tax bargaining: Lessons from an quasi-randomized reform program in Sierra Leone”. World Development. 185 (1) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106796
Hearson, Martin, and Wilson Prichard. 2018. “China’s Challenge to International Tax Rules and the Implications for Global Economic Governance.” International Affairs 94 (6): 1287–1307. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy189
Prichard, Wilson, Paola Salardi, and Paul Segal. 2018. “Taxation, Non-Tax Revenue and Democracy: New Evidence Using New Cross-Country Data.” World Development 109 (September): 295–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.05.014
Prichard, Wilson. 2018. “Electoral Competitiveness, Tax Bargaining and Political Incentives in Developing Countries: Evidence from Political Budget Cycles Affecting Taxation.” British Journal of Political Science 48 (2): 427–57. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123415000757 .
Prichard, Wilson. 2016. “Reassessing Tax and Development Research: A New Dataset, New Findings, and Lessons for Research.” World Development 80 (April): 48–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.11.017.
Hassan, Mirza, and Wilson Prichard. 2016. “The Political Economy of Domestic Tax Reform in Bangladesh: Political Settlements, Informal Institutions and the Negotiation of Reform.” The Journal of Development Studies52 (12): 1704–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2016.1153072.
Jibao, Samuel S., and Wilson Prichard. 2015. “The Political Economy of Property Tax in Africa: Explaining Reform Outcomes in Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 114 (456): 404–31. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adv022.
Joshi, Anuradha, Wilson Prichard and Chris Heady, (2014) “Taxing the Informal Sector: A Review of the Literature” Journal of Development Studies 50(10): 1325-1347