VATEI: Fiscal Effort Index Adjusted for Structural Vulnerability

FERDI researchers constructed a novel fiscal effort index for 120 developing countries from 1990 to 2012, integrating UN-developed composite indices for economic vulnerability and human capital. Their analysis reveals that economic vulnerability negatively impacts tax revenues, while human capital improves them. This panel dataset provides a specific measure for evaluating tax performance while accounting for structural constraints.

Use Cases

• Modeling the impact of structural vulnerability on tax revenue based on the Economic Vulnerability Index.
• Assessing the relationship between human capital development and fiscal capacity using the Human Assets Index.
• Benchmarking fiscal effort across developing countries over a 23-year period.
• Informing development policy by quantifying the fiscal constraints linked to economic fragility.

Strengths

• Covers a substantial panel of 120 developing countries.
• Integrates established UN indices (EVI and HAI) with historical series.
• Provides a long time series spanning over two decades (1990-2012).

Limitations

• Column names and specific variable definitions are not provided in the metadata.
• The dataset size (344839) reported on figshare conflicts with the implied row count (120 countries * 23 years).
• The Dataverse entry lacks file size, row count, and license information.

Provenance

Source

FERDI (Fondation pour les études et recherches sur le développement international)

Collection Method

Constructed by researchers using United Nations composite indices and historical series.

Time Range

1990-2012

Freshness

Metadata was last updated in June 2026, though the data itself covers up to 2012.

Geography

120 developing countries