Why should multilateral lending exist in a world where private capital markets are well developed and governments have … their own bilateral aid programs? If lending by the World Bank, IMF, and regional development banks has an independent …

efficiency. In a broad sample of countries for the years 1973 - 90, we show that broad-based taxes with fairly flat rate …

This paper evaluates the political economy and structural factors explaining the collection efficiency of the Value … Added Tax [VAT]. We consider the case where the collection efficiency is determined by the probability of audit and by the … penalty on underpaying. Implementation lags imply that the present policy maker determines the efficiency of the tax system …

of developed and developing countries show general problems with the efficiency of resource usage similar to those found …

world. Distance volumes and product characteristics matter. In addition, we find that ports efficiency is an important … determinant of shipping costs. Improving port efficiency from the 25th to the 75th percentile reduces shipping costs by 12 percent … explain variations in port efficiency and find that they are linked to excessive regulation, the prevalence of organized crime …

This paper estimates the efficiency consequences of interactions between nominal tax systems and inflation in open … capital movement and influencing domestic and foreign tax receipts, saving, and investment. The efficiency costs of inflation …

for 40 countries plus a rest-of-the-world aggregate. Some gain over 10%, some lose less than 0.2%. Overall, using a novel … measure of the change in iceberg melting, global efficiency rises 0.62% …

, on average. The results provide new objective indicators of government efficiency across countries, based on a simple and …