When do ex-ante beliefs about the values of others affect compliance and honesty? To answer this question, we conduct an experiment, in which subjects face repeated trade-offs between monetary gain and honesty. As a source of exogenous variation, half of the subjects were told that their choices...

This study uses a laboratory experiment to investigate the effect of tax audits on post-audit tax compliance. An important feature of our experimental design is the addition of audit ”effectiveness” to our audit mechanism, where effectiveness is defined as the share of undeclared income that...

The traditional economic approach to enforce tax compliance rests on the assumption that taxpayers are reluctant to pay their share, are inclined to maximize their egoistic goals by rationally considering audit probability and fines in case of detected evasion, and comply only if enforced to...

Traditionally, research focuses on individual taxpayers that - when faced with a decision under uncertainty - are assumed to maximize their profits through rational decision processes. However, economic psychology and behavioral economics reveal several anomalies where the observed effects are...