Type of the article: Research Article Abstract Capital flight remains a paramount concern for lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) when securing external debt, as its volume and the country's economic vulnerability can heighten this concern. This study aims to investigate the heterogeneous effect of external debt on capital flight across 42 lower-middle-income countries from 2004 to 2023. Methodologically, we applied the Methods of Moments quantile regression (MM-QR) approach, benchmarking our estimates against static fixed effects and two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) models. The panel quantile regression shows that capital flight increases in tandem with external debt; however, the positive impact of external debt on capital flight is more pronounced in the lower quantiles and less pronounced in the upper ones. The quantile estimates reveal a highly heterogeneous relationship, with the positive impact of external debt almost doubling from 1.671 at the 90th quantile to 2.663 at the 10th quantile. Ultimately, these findings suggest policymakers must implement targeted, tier-specific debt management strategies to contain capital flight effec-tively, and adopt adequate infrastructure to detect misinvoicing, fake shipments, manipulation of transfer pricing, moral hazard problems, and weak economic governance.
Type of the article: Research Article AbstractThis study aims to examine the relationship between financial structure and current corporate income tax expense among publicly listed oil, gas, and coal companies in Indonesia. Using a quantitative panel-data approach, the study analyzes 28 companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2021–2023, producing a balanced panel of 84 firm-year observations. The analysis focuses on liquidity, solvency, operating costs, and capital intensity, while controlling for firm size, revenue, and profitability. Current corporate income tax expense is measured from audited financial statements and distinguished from effective tax rates, cash tax paid, and government tax revenue. The results demonstrate that operating costs and capital intensity show negative associations in the random-effects model, but these relationships become statistically insignificant in fixed-effects and Mundlak correlated random-effects models. Liquidity and solvency are not statistically significant. The findings therefore indicate specification-sensitive firm-level accounting associations rather than robust within-firm relationships or causal effects. High correlation among monetary variables and the absence of a consistent production-scale measure further require cautious interpretation. The study contributes to understanding corporate tax-accounting outcomes in Indonesia’s extractive sector within a public-finance context.
Type of the article: Research Article AbstractThe study tests whether e-government development is associated with the level of central-government investment and the size of the investment cut that accompanies fiscal consolidation. Two-way fixed-effects panel regressions are estimated for 134 economies across the twelve waves of the United Nations E-Government Survey between 2003 and 2024 (1,319 country-wave observations), with World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) fiscal data. When the primary balance improves by at least one percentage point of GDP in a survey year, countries at the 25th percentile of the E-Government Development Index cut central-government investment by 0.94 percentage points of GDP, and those at the 75th by 0.20 (interaction β = 2.15 per index unit, p = 0.009). Above the upper quartile, the cut is indistinguishable from zero. Outside consolidation episodes, e-government development has no detectable association with investment levels, and the estimate rules out the negative cross-country gradient. The same pattern holds for the capital share of central-government spending and across alternative episode definitions, winsorized outcomes, leave-one-country-out, permutation, and placebo tests and two independent investment series; it is not separable from government effectiveness and weakens with country-specific trends and upper-tail trimming. Episodes achieved through revenue and current spending leave investment untouched at every level of the index; the attenuation reflects the composition of fiscal adjustment. The evidence casts e-government as a marker of the administrative capacity that keeps consolidation off the capital budget; if the association is causal, digital budget, procurement, and project-pipeline systems belong in place before adjustment begins. AcknowledgmentThe contribution of Liudmyla Zakharkina was prepared within the framework of the research project “GovTech for Ukraine: A Digital, Secure, Transparent, and Equitable State in Times of War and Post-War Reconstruction” (registration number 0126U000544), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The other authors received no external funding for this study.
Type of the article: Research Article AbstractFiscal decentralization has transferred substantial financial authority to Indonesian villages, yet whether these resources translate into measurable development progress continues to depend on the quality of local governance and institutional capacity. This study examines the determinants of perceived village-level Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) achievement by testing the mediating role of village fund optimization in the relationships among collaborative governance, human resource capacity, and local government support.Using a quantitative, cross-sectional design, primary data were collected between September 2025 and February 2026 from 100 village officials in Kuningan Regency, West Java, Indonesia, and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), with hypothesis decisions based on 95% bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa) bootstrap confidence intervals. Collaborative governance (β = 0.650) and local government support (β = 0.451) significantly predict village fund optimization (adjusted R2 = 0.675). The direct effect of human resource capacity (β = 0.204) is not statistically distinguishable from zero. Village fund optimization is also significantly associated with perceived village SDG achievement (β = 0.762; adjusted R2 = 0.576) and mediates the relationship for collaborative governance (β = 0.495) and local government support (β = 0.343), but not for human resource capacity (β = 0.155).These findings indicate that how village funds are managed, rather than the volume of the transfer alone, is closely associated with village officials' perceptions of progress toward village SDGs, and that this effectiveness is shaped primarily by collaborative governance and local government support rather than by human resource capacity as measured here.
Type of the article: Research Article AbstractElectronic invoicing is an important component of digital tax administration that improves tax transparency and strengthens revenue administration. This study examines the association between electronic invoicing and regional tax revenues across Kazakhstan’s regions. The analysis uses regional panel data for 16 regions covering 2010–2024 and employs fixed-effects panel regression models together with k-means cluster analysis. The empirical dataset was obtained from the reports of the State Revenue Committee of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Bureau of National Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The results show that electronic invoicing is not significantly associated with regional tax revenues in either the baseline model (β = 0.039; p = 0.538) or the specification with a time trend (β = –0.024; p = 0.690). However, the specification using the shifted e-Inv indicator yields a positive and statistically significant association (β = 0.302; p = 0.047). Because e-Inv is a nationwide step dummy, this result reflects temporal robustness rather than evidence of a delayed fiscal effect. Across all model specifications, GRP per capita remains the strongest determinant of regional tax revenues (β ≈ 0.825-1.102), highlighting the central role of regional economic capacity. The cluster analysis identifies three distinct groups of regions with different fiscal and digital characteristics, illustrating substantial regional heterogeneity in Kazakhstan. The findings suggest that the association between electronic invoicing and regional tax revenues depends on model specification and broader economic conditions. In contrast, regional economic capacity remains the most robust determinant of tax revenues.
