Do local institutions influence the nature of political clientelist exchange? We find a positive answer in the context of a village institution prevalent in Java since the Dutch colonial rule, where democratically elected village heads receive usufruct rights over a piece of communal village...

Numerous countries are introducing citizen feedback schemes to tame corruption. We study how best to incorporate feedback in public officials' incentives. The main novelty of our proposal is to allow citizens to directly influence officials' pay. We consider a situation in which entrepreneurs...

ABSTRACT: This article offers the first comprehensive review of the interdisciplinary state of knowledge regarding anti-corruption policies, with a particular focus on reducing corruption among civil servants. Drawing on the work of economists, political scientists, sociologists, and...

The separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches is a cornerstone of democracy. This system of checks and balances, however, can be circumvented by partisan loyalties if legislators strategically avoid exerting oversight when their own party controls the executive branch....

Did individual British officers determine the institutional development of former colonies? The article presents a new research program into institutional reform and economic development based on a newly established dataset of over 14,000 biographical entries of senior colonial officers in 54...

The article presents a new research agenda which links the composition of the British colonial administrations in the mid-20th century with the economic development of former colonies. It presents the first findings taken from the biographical records of over 14,000 senior colonial officers...

Presumptive income taxes in the form of a tax on turnover for SMEs are pervasive as a way to reduce the costs of compliance and administration. We analyze a model where entrepreneurs allocate labor to the formal and informal sectors. Formal sector income is subjected either to a corporate income...

To enforce regulations, governments often delegate power to public officials. However, officials may have incentives to abuse their discretionary power and engage in bribery or extortion. Efforts to monitor and curb such abuses have inspired interest in using new communication technologies to...

This paper argues that self-reporting schemes whereby citizens report their noncompliance with regulation can prevent corruption in administrations. In our model, entrepreneurs must comply with regulation before undertaking a risky activity. Officials verify compliance before granting permits,...

This paper examines the impact of e-invoicing on firm tax compliance and performance using administrative tax data and quasi-experimental variation in the rollout of VAT electronic invoicing in Peru. We find that e-invoicing increases reported firm sales, purchases and value-added by over 5...