Spillovers in State Capacity Building: Evidence from the Digitization of Land Records in Pakistan
利用巴基斯坦旁遮普省农业税收数据和官僚调查，研究发现土地记录数字化改革意外地削弱了税收征管能力，而非提高国家能力。
Digitization reforms have been hailed as an effective way of strengthening state capacity. However, digitization can also fundamentally reshape the organization of bureaucracies. Using a unique administrative dataset on agricultural taxation and surveys of local bureaucrats from Punjab, Pakistan, we show that digitization reforms can have unintended consequences for state capacity. We exploit the staggered rollout of the digitization of land records in Punjab to show that digitization had a negative effect on tax collection. The fall in taxes was not due to a decrease in the tax base. Instead, digitization affected the bureaucrats’ capacity to collect taxes.