Research-gap map

The proposed projects below use no more than two requested themes per gap. Their broad JEL fields are H (Public Economics), O (Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth), Q (Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics), and C (Mathematical and Quantitative Methods). [citation_1vhz69]

1. From firm-level electronic invoicing effects to tax-network spillovers

Themes and JEL field: public finance + economic digitalization; H (Public Economics), O (Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth), and C (Mathematical and Quantitative Methods). [citation_1vhz69]

What is established. A quasi-experimental evaluation of Peru’s VAT e-invoicing rollout found increases in reported sales, purchases, and VAT liabilities exceeding 5% in the first post-adoption year, with larger effects among small firms and high-noncompliance sectors. Yet existing VAT-credit stocks offset the reform’s positive effect on VAT collection. [citation_1197tg]

The gap. The same study cannot separate compliance from productivity changes, excludes microenterprises and unregistered firms, and explicitly identifies upstream and downstream spillovers as a future research priority. [citation_1vhz6a] This leaves the fiscal relevance of digital tax administration unresolved: digitizing one firm may alter reporting, adoption, and evasion incentives across its supplier and customer network, while the groups with the weakest formal-data coverage may face the highest adoption barriers.

Why it is promising. This is tractable because invoice-level administrative records can be linked to transaction networks and rollout dates. It also speaks directly to whether digital enforcement broadens the tax base or reallocates compliance among already formal firms.

Research direction. Use staggered mandatory adoption as an event-study design on buyer–supplier links. Estimate direct effects, exposure-weighted network effects, entry into formality, exit, VAT payments, and credit use; stratify by supplier size, distance from the registration threshold, sector, and prior informality proxies. Pair administrative data with a randomized adoption-support intervention for micro firms to distinguish technology costs from deterrence.

2. Revenue realization and the VAT-credit mechanism

Themes and JEL field: public finance + economic digitalization; H (Public Economics), O (Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth), and C (Mathematical and Quantitative Methods). [citation_1vhz69]

What is established. E-invoicing may increase reported taxable activity while yielding no immediate gain in actual VAT collections when firms use accumulated credits; the Peruvian evidence concludes that complementary reforms may be needed for revenue mobilization. [citation_1197tg]

The gap. Reported liabilities, credit accumulation, offsets, arrears, audits, and remittances are often treated as separate outcomes. The cited evidence explicitly says that it cannot fully disentangle compliance from productivity changes. [citation_1vhz6a] Consequently, the fiscal transmission chain from data capture to public revenue remains unmeasured rather than merely assumed.

Why it matters. Governments evaluating digital tax investments need an estimate of cash-flow and welfare consequences, not only a change in declarations. Misreading a declaration effect as a revenue effect risks overestimating fiscal space.

Research direction. Build a firm-quarter VAT account panel that reconciles invoices, assessed liability, credit creation and carry-forward, offsets, payment, arrears, refunds, audit actions, and enforcement costs. A dynamic difference-in-differences design could test whether targeted credit-refund rules, risk-based auditing, or prefilled returns convert increased reporting into net collections without imposing liquidity constraints on compliant small firms.

3. Environmental performance of digital transformation: unresolved causal and firm-performance effects

Themes and JEL field: environmental economics + economic digitalization; Q (Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics), O (Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth), and C (Mathematical and Quantitative Methods). [citation_1vhz69]

What is established. A systematic review maps digital transformation across pollution control, waste management, sustainable production, and urban sustainability. It also reports that the environmental effects of digital transformation are uncertain. [citation_1vhz6b]

The gap. The review finds insufficient attention to the organizational capabilities needed for environmentally sustainable digital transformation and states that the effect on overall firm performance, including financial reward and customer loyalty, remains unanswered. [citation_1vhz6b] This is a substantive measurement gap: “digitalization” can denote AI, Internet of Things devices, analytics, cloud systems, or platforms, whereas environmental outcomes can fall through energy use, material intensity, waste, or emissions.

Why it is promising. The gap admits a disciplined design rather than a generic correlation study. It can identify whether digital technology is environmentally complementary to operational change or simply scales resource use.

Research direction. Assemble a longitudinal establishment-level dataset combining technology adoption, electricity and fuel use, material inputs, waste, verified emissions, productivity, and profitability. Compare adopters with matched non-adopters before and after adoption, then estimate mediation through process redesign and organizational capabilities. Pre-specify both operational and lifecycle-relevant outcomes to detect rebound effects rather than treating an efficiency gain as an environmental gain.

4. Strategic governance of environmentally sustainable digitalization

Themes: environmental economics + economic digitalization. JEL field: Q (Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics). [citation_1vhz69]

What is established. The review states that organizational capabilities are needed to use digital technologies for sustainability objectives and reports no account of how environmental sustainability practices become part of strategic decision-making. [citation_1vhz6b]

The gap. Existing work therefore lacks a testable governance model linking board-level strategy, data governance, capital allocation, digital capability, and environmental performance. This matters because a technology deployment can have different effects when it is embedded in procurement, product redesign, and managerial incentives rather than treated as an isolated IT investment.

Research direction. Conduct a multi-country firm panel study supplemented by structured surveys of executives. Develop validated measures of sustainability integration in digital strategy, data quality, and decision rights; test which configurations predict changes in emissions intensity, waste, and financial performance. A difference-in-differences analysis around mandated environmental disclosure or digital-investment incentives could strengthen causal interpretation.

5. Geographic and instrument-specific evidence for green public expenditure

Themes and JEL field: public finance + environmental economics; H (Public Economics) and Q (Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics). [citation_1vhz69]

What is established. A systematic review of 211 publications finds that most decarbonization-policy evaluations concern OECD countries, with very few studies in Sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East. It also identifies only one distributional evaluation of government procurement and limited evidence on auctions and public R&D. [citation_1vhz6c]

The gap. The evidence base is not equipped to determine whether procurement, auctions, or public R&D create equitable low-carbon transitions under different fiscal capacities and market structures. The absence is consequential because public expenditure instruments can reshape who gains access to new technologies, contracts, and markets.

Research direction. Compare matched green-procurement, auction, and R&D programs across emerging and advanced economies. Measure bid participation, award concentration, innovation, employment, prices, emissions, and incidence by firm size and household exposure. Use program thresholds, rollout timing, or eligibility rules for quasi-experimental identification, and report institutional conditions that explain heterogeneous effects.

6. Reconciling distributional contradictions and public acceptance of environmental taxes

Themes and JEL field: public finance + environmental economics; H (Public Economics), Q (Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics), and C (Mathematical and Quantitative Methods). [citation_1vhz69]

What is established. The policy review finds mixed evidence on energy-tax distributional effects and high disagreement for allowance schemes; it concludes that differences in policy design explain many contradictions beyond method, sector, and context. [citation_1vhz6c] A separate systematic review finds higher acceptance when people understand policy effectiveness and revenue use, trust government, and perceive the cost distribution as fair. [citation_1ooj65]

The gap. Incidence analysis and acceptance research remain disconnected. The acceptance review calls for moving beyond generic trust questions to predictors such as responsiveness, reliability, integrity, openness, and fairness, and for studying tax morale and economic perceptions. [citation_1vhz6d] It is therefore unknown whether transparent, progressive revenue recycling changes actual household burden and political durability together.

Research direction. Embed randomized information and revenue-recycling designs in a carbon- or energy-tax reform. Link baseline and follow-up household expenditure panels to surveys measuring trust predictors, tax morale, perceived fairness, and support. Estimate distributional incidence and behavioral responses jointly, comparing lump-sum rebates, targeted transfers, and reductions in other taxes. This directly tests the policy-design mechanisms suggested by the conflicting fiscal evidence.

These six gaps prioritize projects with a defined policy lever, observable outcomes, and a feasible empirical design. The central methodological principle is to measure the mechanism that the policy is supposed to activate—network diffusion, cash revenue, organizational capability, public-expenditure incidence, or trust—not merely the headline technology or tax label.

Generated Outputs

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