Institutions and Fiscal Transparency in Sub Saharan Africa:

Despite the adoption of fiscal rules by most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, fiscal policy outcomes remain compromised by weak fiscal transparency. The current discourse on fiscal transparency points to the influence of institutional improvements for the achievement of better levels of fiscal transparency. Despite its poor fiscal transparency and fiscal outcome, no known study has focused exclusively on SSA. Due to its advantages over other known techniques, the Dynamic Panel Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique was employed in this paper to investigate the role of institutional drivers of fiscal transparency within the context of SSA Countries. Our findings reveal that the overall quality of institutions in Africa positively influences its fiscal transparency level when considered as an aggregate index. It also reveals that individually, government effectiveness as well as the rule of law significantly contributes to improvements in fiscal transparency. Consequently, institutional reforms aimed at improving the level of fiscal transparency in SSA must be holistic and must include all institutional governance indices