Economics Insights @ CBS

The current consensus on indirect tax reform in developing countries favors a reduction in trade taxes with an increase in VAT to raise revenue. The theoretical results on selective reform that underlie this consensus are, however, derived from partial models that ignore the existence of an informal economy. Once the incomplete coverage of VAT due to an informal economy is acknowledged, we show that, contrary to the current consensus, the standard revenue-neutral selective reform of trade taxes and VAT reduces welfare under plausible conditions.

We propose a measure of capital market integration arising from a conditional regime-switching model. Our measure allows us to describe expected returns in countries that are segmented from world capital markets in one part of the sample and become integrated later in the sample. We find that a number of emerging markets exhibit time-varying integration. Some markets appear more integrated than one might expect based on prior knowledge of investment restrictions. Other markets appear segmented even though foreigners have relatively free access to their capital markets.