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Direct tax revenues vary significantly, in the percentage of GDP, in selected countries. This difference is coming for various reasons. Our aim in this paper is to emphasize that there is a vital argumentation which is put forward to explain these variations, called cultural diversity. We employ a panel data with 46 selected countries and using the Materialist/Postmaterialist 12-item index; we highlight the impact of this postmaterialist index on direct tax revenues. Our study comprises six waves, and it includes the most recent dataset regarding culture dimension, namely World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017–2020). Moreover, we control for country characteristics and endogeneity issues. The results show that the degree of postmaterialism explains the level of direct tax revenues. The findings are robust when we include environmental taxes. These results highlight that cultural attitudes should be considered when studying the level of direct tax revenues and how culture dynamics impact taxation.

This study analyzes the strategic use of public debt. Contrary to the classical view that politicians can use public debt to tie the hands of their successors, we show that an incumbent government can take advantage of having tied its own hands before the election with the help of public debt. By doing this, it reduces the basis for future social conflicts and benefits from social peace during its term, which may enhance its chances of being re-elected. In addition, in the case of foreign or external public debt, the incumbent can strategically divert future social conflicts toward a common enemy (foreign creditors). Thus, by increasing public debt before the election, the incumbent can strengthen social cohesion during his/her mandate, both by reducing the basis of internal conflicts and by diverting citizens from internal toward external rent-seeking activities.

This paper studies the role of IMF-supported programs in mitigating the likelihood of subsequent sovereign defaults in borrowing countries. Using a panel of 106 developing countries from 1970 to 2016 and an entropy balancing methodology, we find that IMF-supported programs significantly reduce the likelihood of subsequent sovereign defaults. This finding is robust to different specifications of the entropy balancing and alternative identification strategies. Our results suggest that a country that signs a program with the IMF typically experiences a slight improvement in its sovereign credit rating and a decrease in both government debt-to-GDP and fiscal deficit-to-GDP during the program period compared to the period before. Supplementary Information The online version supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41308-021-00135-7.

This paper provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of caste-based electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral quotas coincides with an increase in the number of murders targeting members of the lower castes. The analysis of these administrative crime data is backed up by the complementary analysis of a nationally representative household survey. Households’ answers reveal an increase in inter-caste tensions and discrimination during the operation of caste quotas. The results are consistent with a backlash against electoral quotas (due to sabotage or retaliation), and inconsistent with other interpretations (such as empowerment).

A reputation of competence in solving a particular problem is useful only if the problem remains in the future. Hence, there is an incentive to keep the “enemy” alive: An agent may do wrong in his or her job precisely because he or she is competent. The paper develops this mechanism in a general career concerns framework and shows that a tradeoff between reputation and the need for enemies emerges. As a result, agents are induced to produce only moderate effort, and only moderately skilled agents are likely to be appointed. Implications of the analysis are discussed in a multitasking environment with incomplete transparency. Some evidence in principal–agent relationships and the political arena is presented to illustrate our theory.

International audience; In this paper, we show how environmental regulation affects trade in fuels. The regulation is assessed along two dimensions: one tackling the extraction and another one dealing with the use of fuels. Using a gravity model with 141 countries for the period 1998-2015, we show that regulations on the extraction of fuels have no impact on trade compared to those related to the use of these non-renewable resources. Specifically, we find that introducing Energy laws slows down fuels trade at the world level and that if importers get involved in more international environmental treaties, they will import less fuels.