Local Elites as State Capacity: How City Chiefs Use Local Information to Increase Tax Compliance in the D.R. Congo

Jonathan Weigel, Balán, Pablo, Augustin Bergeron and Gabriel Tourek

No 15138, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Historical states with low capacity often delegated tax collection to local elites, despite the risk of mismanagement. Could this strategy raise revenues without undermining government legitimacy in fragile states today? We provide evidence from a randomized policy experiment assigning neighborhoods of a Congolese city — spanning 45,162 properties — to tax collection by state agents or by city chiefs. Chief collection raised property tax compliance by 3.3 percentage points, increasing revenues by 43%. Although chiefs collected more bribes, we find no evidence of mismanagement or backlash on other margins. Results from a hybrid treatment arm in which state agents consulted with chiefs before collection suggest that chief collectors achieved higher compliance by using local information to more efficiently target households with high payment propensities, rather than by being more effective at persuading households to pay conditional on having visited them.

JEL-codes: D73 H20 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iue and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15138 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
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:cpr:ceprdp:15138

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15138

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().