scholarly journals How do political institutions affect fiscal capacity? Explaining taxation in developing economies

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERTO RICCIUTI ◽  
ANTONIO SAVOIA ◽  
KUNAL SEN

AbstractA central aspect of institutional development in developing economies is building tax systems capable of raising revenues from broad tax bases, i.e. fiscal capacity. While it is recognised that fiscal capacity is pivotal for state building and economic development, it is less clear what its origins are and what explains its cross-country differences. We focus on political institutions, seen as stronger systems of checks and balances on the executive. Exploiting a recent database on public sector performance in developing economies and an IV strategy, we estimate their long-run impact, distinguishing between the accountability and transparency of fiscal institutions (impartiality) and their effectiveness in extracting revenues. We find that stronger constraints on the executive foster the impartiality of tax systems. However, there is no robust evidence that they also improve its effectiveness. Our findings also suggest that the overall impact on both total tax revenues and income tax is economically relevant.

Author(s):  
Raimundo Soto

The UAE has seemingly escaped “the natural resource curse”: it is one of the richest countries in the world and ranks comparatively highly on business environment, infrastructure, and institutional development. Symptoms of the curse can nevertheless be found in the very low growth in labor productivity, massive public sector overemployment, and the inability to counteract instability induced by oil price cycles. This chapter shows that fiscal policy is highly ineffective as a countercyclical tool due to the absence of income and ad-valorem taxes. Stabilizing instruments—such as open-budgeting procedures or fiscal rules—are notoriously absent. Why would a country design its fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies so that they allow for high levels of pro-cyclicality, thereby hampering efficiency and long-run growth? A political economy explanation is developed whereby weak fiscal institutions are an agreed-upon mechanism to secure political stability and transfer oil wealth among emiratis and to future generations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (623) ◽  
pp. 2745-2778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Traviss Cassidy

Abstract We estimate the long-run effects of oil wealth on development by exploiting spatial variation in sedimentary basins—areas where petroleum can potentially form. Instrumental variables estimates indicate that oil production impedes democracy and fiscal capacity development, increases corruption, and raises GDP per capita without significantly harming the non-resource sectors of the economy. We find no evidence that oil production increases internal armed conflict, coup attempts, or political purges. In several specifications failure to account for endogeneity leads to substantial underestimation of the adverse effects of oil, suggesting that countries with higher-quality political institutions and greater fiscal capacity disproportionately select into oil production.


The question of whether institutional quality is an important driver of growth has been the subject of a growing literature in both developed and developing economies across the globe. This study revisits this relationship in Nigeria from 1981Q1 to 2016Q4 and discusses the relevant policy implications for post Covid-19 Nigeria. The study adopted the ARDL approach which uses a bounds test approach based on unrestricted error correction model (UECM) to test for a long run relationship among the relevant variables. The findings indicate that institutional quality impacts negatively but insignificantly on growth in Nigeria, both at the aggregate and sectoral levels. However, initial output growth levels, capital and labour were found to be important drivers of growth in the country, while trade is growth-retarding. The study concludes that in this post Covid-19 era in Nigeria, there is need to improve the quality of socio-economic and political institutions in the country so that a more robust impact of these institutions can be felt in the economic performance of the country both at the aggregate and sectoral levels.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Bhim Prasad Panta

Background: Stock market plays a crucial role in the financial system of a country. It can be viewed as a channel through which resources are properly channelized. It enables the governments and industry to raise long-term capital for financing new projects. The stock markets of developing economies are likely to be sensitive to various macro-economic factors such as GDP, imports, exports, exchange rates etc., when there is high demand on financial products, as a constituent of financial market, ultimately stock market needs to develop. Many factors can be a signal to stock market participants to expect a higher or lower return when investing in stock and one of these factors are macroeconomic variables and thus, macro-economic variables tend to effect on stock market development. Objective: This study examines the linkage between stock market prices (NEPSE index) and five macro-economic variables, namely; real GDP, broad money supply, interest rate, inflation, and exchange rate using ARDL model and to explain the behavior of the Nepal Stock Exchange Index. Methods: The ECM which is delivered from ARDL model through simple linear transformation to integrate short run adjustments with long run equilibrium without losing long run information. The analysis has been done by using 25 years' annual data from 1994 to 2019. Findings: The result suggests that the fluctuation of Nepse Index in long run is strongly associated with broad money supply, interest rate, inflation, and exchange rate. Conclusion: Though Nepalese stock market is in primitive stage, broad money supply, interest rate, inflation and exchange rate are major factors affecting stock market price of Nepal. So, policies and strategies should be made and directed taking these in to consideration. Implication: The findings of research can be helpful to understand the behavior of Nepalese stock market and develop policies for market stabilization.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Sangyup Choi ◽  
Myungkyu Shim

This paper establishes new stylized facts about labor market dynamics in developing economies, which are distinct from those in advanced economies, and then proposes a simple model to explain them. We first show that the response of hours worked and employment to a technology shock—identified by a structural VAR model with either short-run or long-run restrictions—is substantially smaller in developing economies. We then present compelling empirical evidence that several structural factors related to the relevance of subsistence consumption across countries can jointly account for the relative volatility of employment to output and that of consumption to output. We argue that a standard real business cycle (RBC) model augmented with subsistence consumption can explain the several salient features of business cycle fluctuations in developing economies, especially their distinct labor market dynamics under technology shocks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 319
Author(s):  
Hany Fahmy

The Prebisch-Singer (PS) hypothesis, which postulates the presence of a downward secular trend in the price of primary commodities relative to manufacturers, remains at the core of a continuing debate among international trade economists. The reason is that the results of testing the PS hypothesis depend on the starting point of the technical analysis, i.e., stationarity, nonlinearity, and the existence of structural breaks. The objective of this paper is to appraise the PS hypothesis in the short- and long-run by employing a novel multiresolution wavelets decomposition to a unique data set of commodity prices. The paper also seeks to assess the impact of the terms of trade (also known as Incoterms) on the test results. The analysis reveals that the PS hypothesis is not supported in the long run for the aggregate commodity price index and for most of the individual commodity price series forming it. Furthermore, in addition to the starting point of the analysis, the results show that the PS test depends on the term of trade classification of commodity prices. These findings are of particular significance to international trade regulators and policymakers of developing economies that depend mainly on primary commodities in their exports.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 211-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gan-Ochir Doojav

For resource-rich developing economies, the effect of real exchange rate depreciation on trade balance may differ from the standard findings depending on country specific characteristics. This article employs vector error correction model to examine the effect of real exchange rate on trade balance in Mongolia, a resource-rich developing country. Empirical results show that exchange rate depreciation improves trade balance in both short and long run. In particular, the well-known Marshall–Lerner condition holds in the long run; however, there is no evidence of the classic J-curve effects in the short run. The results suggest that the exchange rate flexibility may help to deal effectively with current account deficits and exchange rate risk. JEL Classification: C32, C51, F14, F32


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