Title,Url,Last update date,Published at,First registered on,RCT_ID,DOI Number,Primary Investigator,Status,Start date,End date,Keywords,Country names,Other Primary Investigators,Jel code,Secondary IDs,Abstract,External Links,Sponsors,Partners,Intervention start date,Intervention end date,Intervention,Primary outcome end points,Primary outcome explanation,Secondary outcome end points,Secondary outcome explanation,Experimental design,Experimental design details,Randomization method,Randomization unit,Sample size number clusters,Sample size number observations,Sample size number arms,Minimum effect size,IRB,Analysis Plan Documents,Intervention completion date,Data collection completion,Data collection completion date,Number of clusters,Attrition correlated,Total number of observations,Treatment arms,Public data,Public data url,Program files,Program files url,Post trial documents csv,Relevant papers for csv Asymmetry in Civic Information: An Experiment on Tax Participation among Small and Informal Firms in Togo,http://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4394,"July 28, 2020",2020-07-28 01:23:50 -0400,2019-06-28,AEARCTR-0004394,10.1257/rct.4394-2.1,Moussa Blimpo mblimpo@worldbank.org,completed,2014-11-01,2015-12-23,"[""finance"", ""firms_and_productivity"", ""governance"", ""welfare"", ""Tax code"", ""informal sector"", ""civic information"", ""experiment""]",Togo (Africa),Paul Castaneda Dower (pdower@wisc.edu) University of Wisconsin-Madison,"H2, O1, O170, L530","","The often observed wedge between statutory policies and on-the-ground enforcement practices in low-income countries for the taxation of small, informal firms may stem from an asymmetry of information about the law. We test this hypothesis in a randomized controlled trial in Lome, Togo by training firms about the tax code and assessing the effect on their tax participation and economic activities. We find that tax participation decreased, driven bylow-revenue firms, and their economic activities expanded. Overall tax revenues increased, suggesting that aggressive taxation under asymmetric civicinformation is likely regressive and counterproductive for firms’ activities andgovernment revenues.","","","",2015-08-01,2015-09-15,"The intervention consisted of the provision of information and training about tax obligations and benefits of taxation to firm owners and society at large. The information included was based on the tax code as well as our interviews with senior tax officials concerning information that they would like these firms to know. Along with information about their tax obligations, the treatment also consisted of what taxes pay for and the cost of these services.","1. Tax compliance 2. Attitudes toward taxation","","","","Many of the firms in the informal sector do not have physical addresses. Additionally, Togo does not have a recent firm census that could serve as a sampling frame. We resorted to a sampling method used by the Afrobarometer surveys, which uses a well-designed shoe leather and sampling on the ground. We used the census tracts as enumeration areas. For each enumeration areas, we randomly select a starting point on the map. Four enumerators then go to the nearest junction to the starting point and choose five businesses in each of the four directions by counting businesses that they encounter on both sides of the streets and selecting every fifth. This first database is then used for the random assignment to the treatment or the control group.","",The randomization was in office by computer following the baseline data collection. ,The unit of randomization is the firm,424 firms,424 firm owners,212 firms owners in the treatment group and 212 firm owners in the control group,"","",None,,,,"",,"","",,"",,"","",""