Assessing the relationship between democracy and domestic taxes in developing countries

Helene Ehrhart

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: To what extent differences across developing countries in their domestic tax mobilization can be explained, in addition to the traditional determinants, by political economy factors and particularly by the political regime? Using a panel of 66 developing countries over the period 1990-2005, this paper provides econometric evidence that democracy matters for achieving higher domestic tax revenues which are much needed to finance public goods. It is especially the level of constraints on the executive which is of importance to counter the government's propensity to cave in for special interests and to be insufficiently welfare minded. We found that high levels of democracy are specifically needed in natural resource rich countries to make natural resource rents contribute to higher domestic tax revenues and no longer be an impediment to a sustained tax system.

Keywords: Tax Revenues; democracy; developing countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01-07
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00553607
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00553607/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Assessing the relationship between democracy and domestic taxes in developing countries (2012)
Working Paper: Assessing the relationship between democracy and domestic taxes in developing countries (2011)
Working Paper: Assessing the relationship between democracy and domestic taxes in developing countries (2009)
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:hal:wpaper:halshs-00553607

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().