Revealed Corruption, Taxation, and Fiscal Accountability: Evidence from Brazil

Timmons, Jeffrey F.; Garfias, Francisco

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.12.011

Cited by 68 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Conversely, municipalities with female mayors (Brollo & Troiano, 2016), mayors eligible for reelection (Ferraz & Finan, 2011), and citizen oversight councils (Avelino, Barberia, & Biderman, 2014) have lower levels of corruption. In terms of the consequences of corruption, research using the audit reports finds that high levels of municipal corruption have a detrimental impact on education outcomes (Ferraz, Finan, & Moreira, 2012), the collection of property taxes (Timmons & Garfias, 2015), and the presence of local business establishments (Bologna & Ross, 2015).…”

Section: Previous Research On the Brazilian Municipal Auditsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consequences of an Anti‐Corruption Experiment for Local Government Performance in Brazil

Funk¹,

Owen²

2020

J Policy Anal Manage

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Decentralization reforms, implemented to improve efficiency and service provision, pose a challenge for federal governments that would like to ensure that federal resources are used appropriately by local governments. To overcome this challenge, some federal governments have implemented costly oversight programs aimed at improving municipal governance. For instance, in 2003, the Brazilian federal government introduced a randomized auditing program with the goal of improving municipal performance by exposing episodes of corruption and mismanagement. Yet, we know little about whether these types of programs actually lead to improvements in local outcomes, especially in terms of service delivery. We argue that audits provide opportunities for learning that should improve performance outcomes. To test this argument, we examine municipal performance in over 5,000 Brazilian municipalities from 2001 to 2012. We utilize the random assignment of audits and estimate difference‐in‐differences regressions. We find that audited municipalities experience greater improvements in performance overall compared to unaudited municipalities, though the effect size is modest. We also find evidence that the auditing program indirectly improves municipal performance. These results indicate that top‐down oversight programs, such as the Brazilian one, are useful not only for improving transparency and accountability, but also for the provision of public services as well.

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Section: Previous Research On the Brazilian Municipal Auditsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consequences of an Anti‐Corruption Experiment for Local Government Performance in Brazil

Funk¹,

Owen²

2020

J Policy Anal Manage

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“…A number of studies measured changes in public spending in health (Björkman Nyqvist et al 2017;Grossman, 2017;Touchton & Wampler, 2015) or more generally (Beuermann & Amelina, 2014;Goncalves, 2013;Grossman & Michelitch, 2018). We also defined other provider actions relating to the citizen engagement intervention such as holding meetings (Pandey et al, 2007) or adopting processes like participatory budgeting (Timmons et al, 2015); or resulting from the engagement, such as activities carried out by staff (Ananthpur et al, 2014;Björkman Nyqvist et al 2017;Diaz-Cayeros, 2014) and projects selected (Humphreys et al, 2014). Two studies further measured variables relating to self-motivation of staff governing the intervention (Alhassan et al, 2016;Bradley et al, 2005) or perceptions about politician performance (Diaz-Cayeros Service use and user attitudes F I G U R E 1 2 Forest plots showing service use outcomes Note: * effect sizes for negative outcomes are inverted for comparability Grossman & Michelitch, 2018;Humphreys & Weinstein, 2012).…”

Section: Provider Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen engagement in public services in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A mixed‐methods systematic review of participation, inclusion, transparency and accountability (PITA) initiatives

Waddington

Sonnenfeld

Finetti

et al. 2019

Campbell Systematic Reviews

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Background: How do governance interventions that engage citizens in public service delivery planning, management and oversight impact the quality of and access to services and citizens' quality of life? This systematic review examined high quality evidence from 35 citizen engagement programmes in low-and middle-income countries that promote the engagement of citizens in service delivery through four routes: participation (participatory priority setting); inclusion of marginalised groups; transparency (information on rights and public service performance), and/or citizen efforts to ensure public service accountability (citizen feedback and monitoring); collectively, PITA mechanisms. We collected quantitative and qualitative data from the included studies and used statistical meta-analysis and realist-informed framework synthesis to analyse the findings.Results: The findings suggest that interventions promoting citizen engagement by improving direct engagement between service users and service providers, are often effective in stimulating active citizen engagement in service delivery and realising improvements in access to services and quality of service provision, particularly for services that involve direct interaction between citizens and providers. However, in the absence of complementary interventions to address bottlenecks around service provider supply chains and service use, citizen engagement interventions alone may not improve key wellbeing outcomes for target communities or state-society relations. In addition, interventions promoting citizen engagement by increasing citizen pressures on politicians to hold providers to account, are not usually able to influence service delivery. Conclusions:The citizen engagement interventions studied were more likely to be successful: (1) where the programme targeted a service that citizens access directly from front-line staff, such as healthcare, as opposed to services accessed independently of service provider staff, such as roads; (2) where implementers were able to generate active support and buy-in for the intervention from both citizens and front-line public ---

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“…We included six studies from Latin America, of which four were from Brazil (Gonclaves, 2013; Touchton & Wampler, 2014; Barde, 2017;Timmons & Garfias, 2015), and one each from Colombia (Molina, 2014) and Mexico (Diaz-Cayeros et al, 2014).…”

Section: Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incentives for climate mitigation in the land use sector – the effects of payment for environmental services (PES) on environmental and socio-economic outcomes in low- and middle-income countries: a mixed-method systematic review

Snilsveit¹,

Stevenson²,

Langer³

et al. 2019

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Although interventions to improve governance via the "short route" between service users and service providers are often effective in engaging citizens in service delivery and improving access to and quality of services, citizen engagement interventions alone are not likely to improve key well-being outcomes for citizens. Interventions that work through local civil society and stimulate capacity for collective action, particularly amongst vulnerable groups, may be more effective than those that rely on engaging unorganized citizens. This is particularly critical for services wherein citizens do not engage regularly with the providers while using the service, such as infrastructure, and thus pose weaker social sanction threats. Citizen-service provider engagement is more effective when implemented through phased, facilitated processes that are framed collaboratively, as opposed to one-off accountability meetings that are interpreted as confrontational. Interventions that do not incorporate specific measures to facilitate the inclusion of vulnerable groups may not realize equitable outcomes for those groups in the short-term. Barriers to vulnerable groups' inclusion varies widely by context, and inclusion components should be adapted in response to local contexts and needs. 1 Killias et al. (2016) are registering a review on the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures.

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Revealed Corruption, Taxation, and Fiscal Accountability: Evidence from Brazil

Cited by 68 publications

References 26 publications

Consequences of an Anti‐Corruption Experiment for Local Government Performance in Brazil

Consequences of an Anti‐Corruption Experiment for Local Government Performance in Brazil

Citizen engagement in public services in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A mixed‐methods systematic review of participation, inclusion, transparency and accountability (PITA) initiatives

Incentives for climate mitigation in the land use sector – the effects of payment for environmental services (PES) on environmental and socio-economic outcomes in low- and middle-income countries: a mixed-method systematic review

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