Ongoing projects

Given the limited capacity to effectively enforce and monitor tax compliance in developing countries, taxpayer trust in the tax authority plays a critical role in fostering voluntary compliance. Since businesses contribute a significant portion of tax revenues, this paper explores the factors influencing trust in the tax authority through an extensive survey of businesspeople’s experiences with taxation in three regions of Tanzania (n=1409). Due to the distinct nature of their interactions and experiences, businesspeople generally place less trust in the tax authority compared to ordinary citizens, making it the least trusted government institution among them. Key factors that positively predict trust include satisfaction with the information and services provided by the tax authority, perceptions of fairness in taxation, and trust in the behaviour of other businesspeople. 

What drives the persistence of harmful social norms? We focus on female genital cutting (FGC), the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons and argue that formal institutions may actively contribute to the perpetuation of the norm if doing so is in their benefit. We examine our hypothesis in Sierra Leone, where the  prevalence rate is 90% and FGC is an expensive rite of passage into womanhood executed within powerful women associations whose leaders have as main source of income FGC fees and dictate the voting behavior of their members, especially in rural areas. Politicians therefore have an incentive to sponsor FGC to mobilize voters. We exploit the constitutionally-driven exogenous timing of general elections to estimate hazard models and document that poorer women in rural households indeed increase their likelihood of undergoing FGC during election years by 25% of their probability in off-election years.

We use detailed eligibility data of 4000 elderly in Bangladesh prior to the beneficiary selection, to assess quasi-experimentally the impact of social pension receipt on their consumption, mental health, physical well-being and satisfaction in a variety of dimensions.