Revenue erosion through exemption and evasion in Cameroon, 1993

Gauthier, Bernard; Gersovitz, Mark

doi:10.1016/s0047-2727(96)01606-4

Cited by 102 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In some cases, investment incentives are available only to projects above a minimum scale. Antitrust enforcement is typically weak and special tax breaks are sometimes meted out to large influential corporations (Gauthier and Gersovitz, 1997); 2) protectionist trade regimes are also more likely to favor large firms because these firms products compete more directly with imports, and because sectors with large firms lobby the government more effectively; 3) of lack of competition or enforcement of antitrust regulation that give incumbent-large firms advantage; 4) of high sunk costs barriers that small firms have difficulty at facing, e.g., costs of dealing with dense regulatory regimes are fixed and the payoffs for doing so increases with the scale of operations (Levenson and Maloney, 1997). Tybout (2000) reviews this literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of institutional development on the growth of Brazilian firms

Carvalho¹

2008

Rev. Bras. Econ.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Este artigo foca nos determinantes da taxa de crescimento das firmas no Brasil. Em particular, investigamos as características individuais das empresas que determinam o seu crescimento, como o desenvolvimento institucional afeta a performance da firma e como o desenvolvimento institucional afeta de maneira diversa pequenas e grandes empresas. Nossos resultados, consistentemente com os modelos de crescimento, indicam que taxas de crescimento decrescem com a idade e tamanho da empresa. Conforme o esperado, empresas que pertencem a um grupo econômico, exportam ou mantêm operações no exterior crescem mais rapidamente. Crescimento é negativamente correlacionado com lucratividade. Observamos também que fraco desenvolvimento institucional, mensurado em termos de corrupção e ineficiência do sistema judiciário e baixo desenvolvimento financeiro, tem impacto negativo sobre o crescimento das empresas. O impacto negativo da corrupção e ineficiência do sistema judiciário é mais acentuado em firmas menores. As grandes empresas são as que mais se beneficiam do desenvolvimento financeiro. No geral, nossos resultados indicam que o desenvolvimento institucional pode ser um mecanismo importante para a promoção do crescimento. Além do mais, o baixo desenvolvimento institucional tem o efeito perverso de promover a concentração. This article focuses on the determinants of firm's growth in Brazil. In particular it investigates the individual characteristics of firm that determine its

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of institutional development on the growth of Brazilian firms

Carvalho¹

2008

Rev. Bras. Econ.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This occurs despite high tax rates due to tax evasion and exemptions (Gauthier and Gersovitz 1997;Gauthier and Reinikka 2006;World Bank 2004see Yang (2008 for evasion on import duties).…”

Section: Lose-lose Versus Win-win Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When bureaucrats are heterogeneous, an extremely high value from the detection distribution must be selected to deter every public servant, which is an overly costly policy. An intermediate detection probability might be more 3 In Cameroon for instance, 34 % of manufacturing firms reported fearing being closed by tax officials, (Gauthier and Gersovitz 1997). 4 For a discussion and examples of bureaucrats' discretionary power over the private sector, see for instance Tanzi and Davoodi (2002) and Rose-Ackerman (1997, 2004.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fiscal policy and corruption

Gauthier

Goyette

2015

Soc Choice Welf

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper develops a simple model of corruption between a tax inspector and a taxpayer in which inspectors' heterogeneity helps explain why it may be optimal for a revenue-maximizing government to tolerate corruption. In our model, tax inspectors could accept a bribe from a taxpayer for under-reporting his income or to avoid harassment in the form of red tape. The government's problem is to design a tax policy and the associated monitoring probability to enforce it. Raising tax rates increases enforcement costs as it increases bribery incentives, so it is optimal not to set tax rates at a too high level. The optimal tax policy includes an optimal supervision level required to reduce corruption, which in turns depends on tax collectors' capacity to impose red tape on taxpayers. When bureaucrats are heterogeneous in terms of their capacity to impose red tape costs, an intermediate detection probability might be appropriate efficiency-wise even if it means tolerating some level of corruption. Bureaucrats' heterogeneity as the likely source of observation of corruption in equilibrium is generic to various environments in which agents' delegated power is misused for private gains and various examples are discussed in the paper. We also show how a government could face lose-lose as well as win-win situations in the conduct of its revenue collection policies. JEL Classification D73 · H21 · H26 · H32

show abstract

“…Specifically, biases in tax policy may favour the creation of smaller firms as a way of avoiding taxes and regulations. Gauthier and Gersovitz (1997) found evidence in Cameroon that small firms prefer to remain small and informal in order to avoid taxes, while large firms were influential enough to obtain special treatment. It was the mid-sized firms that bore the highest tax burden with the result that the distribution of firm size in Africa is characterised by a 'missing middle', which results in investment in Africa being less productive.…”

Section: Policy Failure and External Shocksmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of policy, institutions and geography on economic growth in Africa: an econometric study based on cross‐section and panel data

Naudé

2004

J of Intl Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper use both single period cross-section data as well as panel data for the period 1970 to 1990 (largely obtained from version 6.1 of the Penn World Tables) to identify the determinants of Africa's growth in per capita GDP, as well as to evaluate the empirical relevance of recent contributions that stresses the potential importance of geographical vs institutional factors in Africa's growth. The paper further contributes by making use of recent cross-country data on institutional quality and geographical characteristics of African countries. To address the danger of using an inappropriate estimation method, a number of estimation methods was used, namely OLS, LAD, GLS-random effects, fixed effects as well as a dynamic GMM-estimator. The results confirmed that the more efficient and dynamic GMM-estimator is superior and that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, dynamic effects and endogeneity of the regressors is important. It is concluded that there is conditional convergence in Africa, and that literacy, investment, FDI and urban agglomeration have a significant positive effect on GDP per capita growth in Africa. Growth is negatively affected by government expenditure, settler mortality, malaria, landlockedness and landarea. These results support Acemoglu et al.'s (2001) 'reversal of fortune' thesis, namely that settler mortality is inversely related to economic growth. It further suggests that it is not one of either institutions or geography that are more important than the other, but rather that geography may have an important impact on institutions. The robust finding that the incidence of malaria has a particularly large impact on economic growth in Africa supports this conclusion. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

show abstract

Revenue erosion through exemption and evasion in Cameroon, 1993

Cited by 102 publications

References 6 publications

The effect of institutional development on the growth of Brazilian firms

The effect of institutional development on the growth of Brazilian firms

Fiscal policy and corruption

The effects of policy, institutions and geography on economic growth in Africa: an econometric study based on cross‐section and panel data

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About