Algorithms and Bureaucrats: Evidence from Tax Audit Selection in Senegal

Pierre Bachas, Anne Brockmeyer, Alipio Ferreira and Bassirou Sarr

No 20608, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Can algorithms enhance bureaucrats’ work in developing countries? In data-poor environments, bureaucrats often exercise discretion over key decisions, such as audit selection. Exploiting newly digitized micro-data, we conduct an at-scale field experiment whereby half of Senegal’s annual audit program is selected by tax inspectors and the other half by a transparent risk-scoring algorithm. Algorithm-selected audits are 18 ppt less likely to be conducted, detect 89% less evasion, are less cost-effective, and don’t reduce corruption. Moreover, even a machine-learning algorithm would only have moderately raised detected evasion. These results are consistent with bureaucrats’ expertise, the task complexity, and inherent data limitations.

Keywords: Algorithms; Firms; Bureaucrats; Taxation; State capacity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H26 H83 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20608 (application/pdf)

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:20608

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20608

Access Statistics for this paper

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