This paper analyzes the procyclicality of fiscal policy on the tax and spending sides in a sample of 116 developing countries between 2000 and 2016.
... See More + About 20 percent of the countries in the sample switched from procyclical to countercyclical policy stance. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 30 of 39 countries remained caught in the procyclicality trap and the region has the highest degree of procyclicality. The Middle East and North Africa region switched from a countercyclical policy stance to a procyclical one over time. The Europe and Central Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean regions significantly reduced the degree of procyclicality. The main economic variables that affect procyclicality are financial depth, tax base variability, and natural resource dependence. In line with the political economy literature, the perception of corruption, social fragmentation, and inequality in resource distribution are positively associated with procyclicality. The findings also show that the quality of fiscal institutions is associated with procyclicality; countries with fiscal rules have smaller procyclical bias, but the effect is not homogeneous; and higher degrees of expenditure rigidity are associated with lower procyclical bias. The study finds asymmetric policy stances along the business cycle, with procyclicality being more pronounced during recessions. Similarly, the political cycle affects procyclicality, as procyclical bias increases in electoral years. From the tax management perspective, procyclical bias is still present, but there are significant changes: most of the political economy variables lose significance; the resource-dependence variable is not significant; external credit availability reduces procyclicality; tax base variability increases procyclical bias; and expenditure rigidity is no longer significant, but fiscal space becomes determinant of procyclical bias.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8963 AUG 06, 2019
Although low tax morale hits developing countries hardest, little is known about its determinants in those countries. This paper examines the impact of trust in public institutions and the neighborhood on individual tax morale in four African countries: Algeria, Ghana, Morocco, and Nigeria.
... See More + First, the paper provides theoretical foundations of such a relationship. Further, the paper uses the World Value Survey to estimate the effects of trust in public institutions and the neighborhood on individual tax morale. The identification strategy employs the instrumental variables method and relies on historical data on the slave trade and the literature on the cultural heritage of trust. The paper finds that trust in public institutions and the neighborhood are largely associated with tax morale in the African countries under consideration. The findings are robust to an alternative identification strategy, additional controls, and a falsification test.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8968 AUG 06, 2019
This paper examines the impact of the quality of the business environment as well as the monitoring capacity of the tax agency on firms' tax evasion and production decisions.
... See More + First, the paper uses firm-level data for 30 African and Latin American countries to show that tax evasion and distortions stemming from the business environment are positively and significantly correlated, while sales not reported for tax purposes and institutional quality are negatively and significantly correlated. Second, the paper develops a general equilibrium model where heterogeneous firms make tax evasion decisions based on their assessment of the quality of their business environment as well as the monitoring capacity of the tax agency. The model simulations for each country in the African and Latin American sample show that the model can explain 35 percent of the variation in tax evasion and more than 49 percent of the dispersion in output per worker across the sample countries. Finally, a series of counterfactual experiments shows that, at the current level of deterrence, governments could decrease sales not reported for tax purposes by 21 percent, by reducing distortions stemming from the business environment by half. The paper presents empirical supporting evidence consistent with testable predictions of the model.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8522 JUL 11, 2018
This paper assesses the effects of selected structural reforms on labor productivity growth for 37 developing countries over 2006-14. It combines newly constructed reform indexes using the International Monetary Fund's Monitoring of Fund Arrangements data set and firm-level productivity from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
... See More + The paper highlights the following results. Structural reforms under consideration in this study -- financial, fiscal, real sector, and trade reforms -- significantly improve productivity at the firm level. Interestingly, real sector reforms have the most sizable effects on firms' productivity. The relationship between reforms and productivity is nonlinear and shaped by certain characteristics of firms, including financial access, a distortionary environment, and firms' size. The pace of reforms matters, since being a “strong reformer” is associated with a clear productivity dividend for firms. Finally, except for financial and trade reforms, all the macroeconomic reforms considered are bilaterally complementary in improving firms' productivity. These findings are robust to several sensitivity checks, including alternative methodologies and measures of productivity, and a counterfactual experiment based on unsuccessful reforms.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8308 JAN 18, 2018
Despite sustained economic growth over the past two decades, Sub-Saharan Africa faces massive challenges and significant gaps in many development outcomes.
... See More + Although poverty has been declining, a recent report estimates that over two-fifths of the African population was poor in 2012. Nearly two-thirds of Africans do not have electricity. Less than one quarter of African enterprises have loans or lines of credit; the corresponding share among firms in non-African developing countries is almost half. The use of formal financial services is concentrated among the richest 20 percent of the population. Most African countries have made significant gains in access to education, but learning remains weak. The agriculture sector, which employs a large share of the labor force, exhibits low productivity. Technological change and levels, which are the drivers of productivity, are much lower compared to other parts of the world. Even simple productivity-enhancing factors like the use of fertilizers has remained flat for decades. Africa’s large infrastructure, technology, and policy gaps require disruptive solutions and thinking outside of the box. Yet, development policies have often been primarily programmatic and mostly incremental. This book argues that it is time to go back to basics of development, think big, and foster the environment for more innovation and technology adoption, to provide the chance for Africa to experience major positive transformations. This is not a new idea; to the contrary, it is what economic theory and history teach. While it has become customary in the development practice to highlight and quantify constraints to investing in Africa, this book argues that those constraints must be and transformed into investment opportunities. Several factors, such as skills, service delivery, access to finance, energy, to name the few, are often pointed out as constraints to investment. Treating those constraints as investment opportunities, attracting the private sector, both domestic and foreign, and creating a conducive environment for technological diffusion is precisely how Africa will harness innovation toward its prosperity.
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This paper examines the determinants of the productivity of Nigerian firms, using three waves of Enterprise Surveys from 2007, 2009, and 2014 and 7,670 firms.
... See More + The paper uses three alternative measures of productivity, which are found to be highly correlated: labor productivity, value added per worker, and total factor productivity. The more notable trends in the data show: a rise in productivity, with the output of exporting firms decreasing; increasing concentration of production, reflected in the rise of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index by a factor of three; increasing costs of crime, power outages, lack of security, and bribery; significant heterogeneity of these costs along several dimensions, such as firm size, age, location, and the exporting or domestic nature of the market it serves. These costs are inversely related with investment. Regardless of the measure of productivity, its main determinants are the education of the worker, size of the firm, availability of credit, and business climate variables. When labor productivity is used, the stock of capital is also a major determinant of productivity. Within the investment climate variables, power outages and the corruption index are the more significant ones. Power outages are negatively associated with productivity. Bribery is positively related, supporting the "greasing the wheels" hypothesis of bribery as a factor that reduces transaction costs. The impact is nonlinear, as it decreases with firm size. The results also show a positive association between productivity and exporting, but the causality is reversed when the analysis controls for endogeneity: productivity is a weak determinant of the likelihood of a firm becoming an exporter.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8145 JUL 12, 2017
