IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/25532.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding productivity trends in UK tax collection

Author

Listed:
  • Carrera, Leandro N.
  • Dunleavy, Patrick
  • Bastow, Simon

Abstract

Productivity is defined as the ratio of outputs to inputs. When applied to the public sector, productivity becomes a key performance indicator that shows how efficiently public resources are employed in providing public services. Until not too long ago productivity in the public sector was assumed to be flat as outputs were given the same price as the cost of producing them. Recent methodological approaches suggest to measure outputs directly in order to count with realistic productivity estimates. Empirical public sector productivity studies are still in its infancy. This paper proposes to contribute to this new field by analysing productivity changes in the area of tax collection. This is a key area in which, as of 2008, the central government spent over £3.3bn in administrative resources and which provided more than £450bn in revenue, involving the processing of more than 24 million different tax forms. We contend that key changes in public management approaches in the UK during the last twenty years may be related to the observed changes in tax collection productivity. Specifically, we posit that the transition from the so called New Public Management (NPM) approach to Digital Era Governance (DEG) one, which focuses on the re-centralisation of government agencies and the reliance on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to simplify administrative processes, must have had an impact on productivity. We test this assumption by analysing productivity trends during an eleven year period from 1997 to 2008. We find some support for our assumption, showing that the transition to DEG in the early 2000s led to a drop in productivity, which recovered its upward trend towards the mid 2000s. We also analyse how ICT and outsourcing expenditure contributed to productivity increases and we also explore how service quality levels have performed during the analysed period. We conclude by highlighting that recent productivity increases should be coupled with higher service quality levels in order to improve customer experience with this public service. Overall, this paper shows the potential to expand this analytical framework to other public services to expand our comparative knowledge of performance across the UK public sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Carrera, Leandro N. & Dunleavy, Patrick & Bastow, Simon, 2009. "Understanding productivity trends in UK tax collection," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 25532, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:25532
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/25532/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy C. Sargent & Edgard R. Rodriguez, 2000. "Labour or Total Factor Productivity: Do We Need to Choose?," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 1, pages 41-44, Fall.
    2. Ragin, Charles C., 2000. "Fuzzy-Set Social Science," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226702773, January.
    3. Bloom, Nick & Dorgan, Stephen & Dowdy, John & Van Reenen, John & Rippin, Tom, 2005. "Management practices across firms and nations," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 4669, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Luis Garicano & Paul Heaton, 2010. "Information Technology, Organization, and Productivity in the Public Sector: Evidence from Police Departments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 167-201, January.
    5. repec:bla:jindec:v:46:y:1998:i:2:p:257-79 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226702766 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kamini Gupta & Donal Crilly & Thomas Greckhamer, 2020. "Stakeholder engagement strategies, national institutions, and firm performance: A configurational perspective," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(10), pages 1869-1900, October.
    2. Cheng, Cheng-Feng & Chang, Man-Ling & Li, Chu-Shiu, 2013. "Configural paths to successful product innovation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(12), pages 2561-2573.
    3. Markus Mayer & Markus Voeth, 2022. "Improving negotiation success in B2B sales organizations: is structured negotiation management a success factor?," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 163-196, February.
    4. Mina Baliamoune-Lutz, 2004. "On the Measurement of Human Well-being: Fuzzy Set Theory and Sen's Capability Approach," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-16, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Mohamed Amara & Khaled Thabet, 2019. "Firm and regional factors of productivity: a multilevel analysis of Tunisian manufacturing," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 63(1), pages 25-51, August.
    6. Laura Hospido & Eva Moreno-Galbis, 2015. "The Spanish productivity puzzle in the Great Recession," Working Papers 1501, Banco de España.
    7. Kusa, Rafał & Suder, Marcin & Duda, Joanna, 2023. "Impact of greening on performance in the hospitality industry: Moderating effect of flexibility and inter-organizational cooperation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    8. Gary Goertz & Tony Hak & Jan Dul, 2013. "Ceilings and Floors," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 42(1), pages 3-40, February.
    9. Cristian Bartolucci & Francesco Devicienti, 2012. "Better Workers Move to Better Firms: A Simple Test to Identify Sorting," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 259, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    10. Skarmeas, Dionysis & Lisboa, Ana & Saridakis, Charalampos, 2016. "Export performance as a function of market learning capabilities and intrapreneurship: SEM and FsQCA findings," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 5342-5347.
    11. Nicholas Bloom & Luis Garicano & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2014. "The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(12), pages 2859-2885, December.
    12. Arts, Bas & de Koning, Jessica, 2017. "Community Forest Management: An Assessment and Explanation of its Performance Through QCA," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 315-325.
    13. Grohs, Reinhard & Raies, Karine & Koll, Oliver & Mühlbacher, Hans, 2016. "One pie, many recipes: Alternative paths to high brand strength," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 2244-2251.
    14. Jantunen, Ari & Tarkiainen, Anssi & Chari, Simos & Oghazi, Pejvak, 2018. "Dynamic capabilities, operational changes, and performance outcomes in the media industry," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 251-257.
    15. Barry Cooper & Judith Glaesser, 2016. "Analysing necessity and sufficiency with Qualitative Comparative Analysis: how do results vary as case weights change?," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 327-346, January.
    16. Gustav Lidén, 2013. "What about theory? The consequences on a widened perspective of social theory," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 213-225, January.
    17. Blesse, Sebastian & Diegmann, André, 2022. "The place-based effects of police stations on crime: Evidence from station closures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    18. Wang, Huanming & Ran, Bing, 2022. "How business-related governance strategies impact paths towards the formation of global cities? An institutional embeddedness perspective," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    19. Helen Simpson, 2009. "Productivity In Public Services," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 250-276, April.
    20. Fleck, Ann-Katrin & Anatolitis, Vasilios, 2023. "Achieving the objectives of renewable energy policy – Insights from renewable energy auction design in Europe," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:25532. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.