Are Corruption and Taxation Really Harmful to Growth? Firm-Level Evidence

Fisman, Raymond ; Svensson, Jakob

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE TERMS;    ANNUAL GROWTH;    ANNUAL GROWTH RATE;    AVERAGE TAX RATES;    BANKING SYSTEM;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2485
RP-ID  :  WPS2485

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Exploiting a unique data set containinginformation about the estimated bribe payments of Ugandanfirms, the authors study the relationship between bribepayments, taxes, and firm growth in Uganda for the period1995-97. Using industry-location averages to circumvent thepotential problem of endogeneity, and to deal with issues ofmeasurement error, they find that both the rate of taxation,and the rate of bribery are negatively correlated with firmgrowth. For the full data set, a one percentage pointincrease in the bribery rate is associated with threepercentage point reduction in firm growth - an effect aboutthree times that of taxation. Moreover, after excludingoutliers, the authors find that bribery has a much greaternegative impact on growth, and taxation a considerablysmaller one. This provides some validation of firm-leveltheories of corruption, which posit that corruption retardsdevelopment, even more than taxation does.