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Title How middle-men can undermine anti-corruption reforms
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/10202/93
Date 2005
Author(s) Bjorvatn, Kjetil; Torsvik, Gaute; Tungodden, Bertil
Abstract The anti-corruption reform in the Tanzanian tax bureaucracy in the mid-1990s was apparently a short-lived success. In the wake of the reform, a number of "tax experts" established themselves in the market, many of them being laid off tax bureaucrats. We argue that middle -men can undermine the effect of an anti-corruption reform by reducing the uncertainty that firms face vis -à-vis a reformed tax bureaucracy, which in turn may encourage firms to pay bribes rather than taxes. Indeed, under some circumstances, middle-men can cause corruption to be higher after the reform than before the reform. Since the demand for middle -men may increase with the extent of the reform, we also demonstrate that a small reform may be more efficient in combatting corruption than a more radical reform.
Subject(s) Corruption; Reform; Middle-men; Institutions; Tanzania
Language en
Publisher Chr. Michelsen Institute
Relation CMI Working paper; WP 2005: 1
Type of publication Working Paper
Identifier 82-8062-103-2; 0804-3639
Repository Bergen - Christian Michelsen Institute
Added to C-A: 2008-12-22;03:22:13