This background paper reviews the reform of the state inspections system in Latvia from 1999 through 2003. The aim is to illuminate the political and institutional reform elements and the intricate day-to-day management of such public sector reform endeavors, and highlight the mechanisms and...

Government inspections of firms are important for enforcing regulations to protect public health, safety, and the environment and to carry out economic functions such as tax collection and banking regulation. But most inspection regimes in developing countries impose excessive costs on firms...

This paper analyzes land transactions between municipalities and private businesses based on official data and business surveys in 15 regions of the Russian Federation. Since the Russian Federation passed the new Land Code in 2001, land privatization has been officially encouraged by the federal...

The authors use firm-level survey data on 998 small and medium enterprises registered for tax in South Africa regarding tax compliance costs to investigate the use of outsourcing to complete tax compliance tasks. Overall, about 43 percent of the enterprises do all their tax compliance work...

This paper is based on large-scale surveys of formal and informal small businesses in South Africa, including questions about their experiences and perceptions about tax compliance, tax morale, and related variables. The survey findings suggest that formalization is more likely to take place in...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between electronic filing (e-filing) and the total tax compliance costs incurred by small and medium size businesses in developing countries, based on survey data from South Africa, Ukraine, and Nepal. A priori, most observers expect...