This project examines fiscal reforms in Brazil since the 1990s, particularly in taxation, budgeting, and fiscal federalism. While recentralizing fiscal authority and massively expanding the extractive capacity of the state, policymakers chose not to revamp an inefficient tax system that has...

This paper explores the characteristics of the political economy process that conditioned the scope and success of the combination of fiscal reforms before and after Colombia s 1991 constitutional reforms. Using formal analysis of reforms and interviews with actors, reforms in taxation,...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of the 26 Swiss cantons over the period 2000 to 2004 applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). A Total Public Sector Performance (TPSP) indicator for eight local government activities (administration, public safety, education, culture and...

A large body of research has estimated the effects on tax collection of informing taxpayers of their obligations. This paper examines the effects on voluntary tax payments of providing taxpayers with information on their obligations that is collected through massive information cross-checking...

This chapter examines the redistributive preferences of Latin Americans and investigates the factors that shape them. Using a detailed survey in eight Latin American countries, the study sheds new light on redistributive preferences and explores which aspects of redistribution are more popular...

In this work we simulate the effects of tax autonomy of the Austrian states on the levels of public employment in each state. We show that depending on the strength of the public sector lobby, tax autonomy would require reduction of employment in the public sector between 25% and 35% of the...

Although recent research has shed new light on the political determinants and economic consequences of tax lawmaking, existing analyses rely on coarse data measuring political aggregates. Consequently, little is known about the political processes determining how tax legislation is written or...

This paper investigates the political economy of fiscal reform activism in Argentina since the late 1980s. Between 1988 and 2008, tax legislation was changed 83 times, fiscal federal rules 14 times, and budgetary institutions sixteen times. Tax and budgetary reforms moved from centralizing...

This article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it provides new evidence of the impact of community monitoring interventions using a unique dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on...