nep-iue New Economics Papers
on Informal and Underground Economics
Issue of 2020‒07‒13
five papers chosen by
Catalina Granda Carvajal
Universidad de Antioquia

  1. How Do Taxpayers Respond to Public Disclosure and Social Recognition Programs? Evidence from Pakistan By Slemrod, Joel; Ur Rehman, Obeid; Waseem, Mazhar
  2. The incidence of VAT evasion By Asatryan, Zareh; Gomtsyan, David
  3. Estimating the Corporate Income Tax Gap; The RA-GAP Methodology By Junji Ueda
  4. Lending to the Unbanked: Relational Contracting with Loan Sharks By Lang, Kevin; Leong, Kaiwen; Li, Huailu; Xu, Haibo
  5. Asentamientos informales en América Latina: epicentro urbano de los desafíos del desarrollo sostenible By Bonilla Ortiz-Arrieta, Luis; Silva, María Jesús

  1. By: Slemrod, Joel; Ur Rehman, Obeid; Waseem, Mazhar
    Abstract: We examine two Pakistani programs to see if the public disclosure of tax information and social recognition of top taxpayers promote tax compliance. Pakistan began revealing income tax paid by every taxpayer in the country from 2012. Simultaneously, another program began recognizing and rewarding the top 100 tax paying corporations, partnerships, self-employed individuals, and wage-earners. We find that both programs induced strong compliance responses. The public disclosure caused on average a 9 log-points increase in the tax paid by individuals exposed to the program. The increase was even larger for the social recognition program, around 17 log-points. Our results suggest that such programs can be important policy levers to mobilize resources, especially in weak-enforcement-capacity economies.
    Keywords: tax evasion
    JEL: H24
    Date: 2020–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14463&r=all
  2. By: Asatryan, Zareh; Gomtsyan, David
    Abstract: Who benefits from the evasion of value added taxes (VAT)? Using a reform that enforced VAT on previously non-compliant large retailers in Armenia, we estimate a onethird passthrough of the tax burden on prices. This suggests that pre-enforcement evasion rents were broadly shared with consumers through lower prices. Our theoretical and empirical results explain this low passthrough rate by the supply-chain effects and second-order compliance responses of firms to VAT enforcement. Our distributional analysis shows that households at the bottom of the income distribution benefit more from the rents of evasion.
    Keywords: Value added tax,Incidence,Evasion,Enforcement,Distributional Effects
    JEL: D11 H22 H26
    Date: 2020
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:20027&r=all
  3. By: Junji Ueda
    Abstract: The IMF Fiscal Affairs Department's Revenue Administration Gap Analysis Program (RA-GAP) aims to provide a quantitative analysis of the tax gap between potential revenues and actual collections, and this technical note explains the concept of the tax gap for corporate income tax (CIT), and the methodology to estimate CIT gaps. It includes detailed steps to derive the potential CIT base and liability with careful consideration for the theoretical differences between the coverage of statistical macroeconomic data and the actual tax base of CIT, and then compare the estimated results with actual declarations and revenues. Although the estimated gaps following the approach will have margins of errors, it has the advantage of using available data without additional costs of collection and suits initial evaluations of overall CIT noncompliance in a country.
    Keywords: Corporate income taxes;Revenue administration;Tax compliance;Tax evasion;Tax Gap, Corporate Income Tax, General, Business Taxes and Subsidies
    Date: 2018–09–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imftnm:2018/002&r=all
  4. By: Lang, Kevin (Boston University); Leong, Kaiwen (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore); Li, Huailu (Fudan University, China); Xu, Haibo (Tongji University)
    Abstract: We study roughly 11,000 loans from unlicensed moneylenders to over 1,000 borrowers in Singapore and provide basic information about this understudied market. Borrowers frequently expect to repay late. While lenders do rely on additional punishments to enforce loans, the primary cost of not repaying on time is compounding of a very high interest rate. We develop a very simple model of the relational contract between loan sharks and borrowers and use it to predict the effect of a crackdown on illegal moneylending. Consistent with our model, the crackdown raised the interest rate and lowered the size of loans.
    Keywords: illegal lending, enforcement, relational contract
    JEL: K42 L14
    Date: 2020–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13360&r=all
  5. By: Bonilla Ortiz-Arrieta, Luis; Silva, María Jesús
    Abstract: Recientemente se ha constituido una agenda urbana de desarrollo sostenible que tiene como fundamentos los diagnósticos y compromisos asumidos en diversos acuerdos internacionales que han tenido lugar en los últimos años. Entre estos resaltan la Agenda 2030, la Nueva Agenda Urbana Mundial y el Acuerdo de París. Desde distintas perspectivas y con abordajes interrelacionados, estos acuerdos abordan los principales desafíos de las ciudades del mundo y de los procesos de urbanización. En el caso de América Latina, estos desafíos se contextualizan en lo que CEPAL (2016) ha denominado como las tres contradicciones de la región: crecimiento con desigualdad y persistencia de la pobreza; reducción de déficits de vivienda con segregación espacial, social y económica; y finalmente, democratización con altos índices de violencia. Abordar estas problemáticas de forma sostenible, estructural y multidimensional son parte esencial de los compromisos asumidos por la agenda internacional de desarrollo urbano sostenible. En América Latina, avanzar sobre la senda de cumplimiento de estos compromisos pasa necesariamente por poner especial atención a los asentamientos informales en condición de pobreza, una forma de habitar la ciudad en la que se encuentran alrededor de 1 de cada 5 personas de la región y que es una de las manifestaciones más extremas de los déficits del desarrollo regional. Podemos decir que “la exclusión, la fragmentación de la sociedad y del espacio urbano son las respuestas de algunos segmentos de la población frente a la incapacidad o a la imposibilidad de los gobiernos de administrar el crecimiento de la ciudad y sus transformaciones” (Balbo, 2003 : 311). La proyección de este estudio es servir de base para la construcción de un observatorio de la implementación de la agenda internacional de desarrollo sostenible desde una perspectiva territorial y multidimensional adaptada a los asentamientos informales en América Latina.
    Keywords: DESARROLLO SOSTENIBLE, ASENTAMIENTOS HUMANOS, ASENTAMIENTOS INFORMALES, POBREZA, INTEGRACION SOCIAL, PLANIFICACION URBANA, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, HUMAN SETTLEMENTS, INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS, POVERTY, SOCIAL INTEGRATION, URBAN PLANNING
    Date: 2019–09–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecr:col043:45632&r=all

This nep-iue issue is ©2020 by Catalina Granda Carvajal. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.