We study a policy in Iran that grants tax cuts to firms experiencing growth above a specified threshold. Using the universe of Iranian corporate tax returns from 2013 to 2022, we employ the bunching method and find that the growth of firms’ taxable income has increased by 1.17 percentage points. Additionally, event-study results show that this growth corresponds with a reduction in the share of reported exemptions by firms. Evidence suggests that the increase in reported growth is driven by over-reporting of income and inter-temporal income shifting to maximize tax reductions.

The objective of this article is to analyze the impact of government size on the Musgravian performance of Sub-Saharan African countries. The Generalized Moments Method (GMM) in a system is applied to a sample of 40 countries over the period from 2006 to 2021. The results obtained show that the size of government significantly affects public performance in all three dimensions of Musgrave. First, it has a positive effect on government stability. Secondly, it reduces the income allowance and promotes employment. Finally, it reduces the share of the population living below the minimum income. Therefore, rather than increasing the size of government, it is recommended to accelerate the digitalization of public administrations in order to improve the quality of institutions and reduce corruption. As a result of this investigation, we note that the problem of sub-Saharan governments is not the quantity of the rulers, but the quality of their actions.

We investigate the impact of financial intermediation on economic growth in four North African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia). Based on a Principal Component Analysis to construct an index that measures financial intermediation and using Granger causality tests we analyze whether financial intermediation influences economic growth. Using data from 1990 to 2018, we show that financial intermediation does not Granger cause economic growth in these North African countries. This contrasts with the findings in similar but older studies for the East African Community (EAC) countries. We also show that inflation has a significant short-run impact on growth in the North African countries.

Against the backdrop of the new Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decisions to maintain the status quo policy rates, we analyse the post-pandemic monetary policy stance in India. Using high-frequency time series data spanning from January 2020 to July 2023, the term structure of interest rate is analyzed by incorporating monetary aggregates, fiscal deficit, inflation expectations, and capital flows, employing the ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) model. The results revealed that the fiscal deficit does not significantly determine interest rates in India's post-pandemic monetary policy stance. While the long-term interest rates were strongly influenced by the short-term interest rates (reinforcing the operation of term structure in India), capital flows, and inflation expectations, the money supply inversely impacted it. These inferences have policy implications on the fiscal and monetary policy coordination in India, where it is crucial to analyse the efficacy of a high interest rate regime on public debt management.