Calendrier du 07 janvier 2020
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 07/01/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BERGERON Augustin (Harvard University)
Local Elites as Tax Collectors: Experimental Evidence from the DRC
Historical states with low capacity often empowered local elites to collect taxes, despite the risk of mismanagement. Could local tax collection raise revenues without undermining government legitimacy in fragile states today? We provide evidence from a field experiment in which the Provincial Government of Kasai Central, in the DR Congo, randomly assigned city neighborhoods to centralized property tax collection, conducted by agents of the tax ministry, or local tax collection, conducted by neighborhood chiefs. Local collection generated 30% higher revenues and 24% lower transaction costs compared to central collection. Although there is evidence of a small increase in bribes, local collection did not undermine citizens’ views of the government; in fact, it increased reported confidence in the formal state. Hybrid treatment arms and survey evidence suggest that local chiefs achieved higher citizen tax compliance because of their informational advantages rather than a differential ability to threaten sanctions, to make salient the public-goods-tax link, or to motivate tax morale.