Many e-government initiatives introduce technology to improve efficiency and avoid potential human bias. Using experimental variation, we examine the impact of electronic tax filing (to replace in-person submission officials) using data from Tajikistan firms. E-filing reduces time firms spend on taxes by 40 percent. Further, among previously more likely evade, e-filing doubles paid. Conversely,...

This paper is motivated by an important puzzle that arises from the contrasting macroeconomic experience across developing regions in the recent decades. In sharp contrast to East Asia, the fiscal policies in much of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa are characterized by large fiscal deficits and volatilities of fiscal outcomes. In order to address both large deficits and volatile fiscal out...

Policy changes in Indonesian banking from 1983 through 1990 saw the removal of controls on interest rates, lending, and expansion of branch networks, and of barriers to entry. The dismantling of loan subsidy programmes financed by the central bank ran in parallel with these changes. Private banks have been enabled to erode rapidly the market share of the previously dominant, but less efficient ...

We show that a simple and intuitive three-parameter equation fits remarkably well the evolution of the gross domestic product (GDP) in current and constant dollars of many countries during times of recession and recovery. We then argue that this equation is the response function of the economy to isolated shocks, hence that it can be used to detect large and small shocks, including those which ...