Using Internal and External Sources of Information to Reduce Customs Evasion

Cyril Chalendard

No 201701, Working Papers from CERDI

Abstract: This paper aims to identify some factors that reduce evasion of customs duties in developing countries. Following the recent literature on customs evasion, we proxy customs fraud by discrepancies in bilateral trade statistics. Estimates first show that the more frequently a product is imported, the more customs fraud reduces. We argue that this result is indicative of the fact that customs officers use what they have learned from similar import declarations - use customs' internal information - to better assess the compliance of declarations. Then, we show that relying on an information provider - a pre-shipment inspection company in our case - seems to increase tax enforcement. Results indicate that pre-shipment inspections significantly reduce observed discrepancies in trade statistics. In line with previous studies, we find that the semi-elasticity of evasion increases with the tax rate. Finally, estimates confirm that enforcement is product-varying. Results are robust to various robustness checks.

Keywords: Use of internal information; External Information acquisition; Customs enforcement; Tax evasion; Pre-shipment inspections. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 H26 H83 K42 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue and nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2017/2017.01.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2017/2017.01.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2017/2017.01.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Using Internal and External Sources of Information to Reduce Customs Evasion (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1856

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from CERDI Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vincent Mazenod ().