Governments in Latin America raise little revenue from property taxation, despite arguments for its efficiency and equity. Adequate registry information would support consistent collection, but registries are costly to establish and maintain. Compared to tax collection, field experimental...

Cash transfer and other social protection programs in developing countries have often been accompanied by measures to foster financial inclusion, such as the adoption and use of bank accounts and electronic means of payments. Argentina's social benefits are paid in bank accounts and accessed...

Recent literature highlights a paradox in corruption prevention messaging: instead of reducing tolerance for corruption, such campaigns can inadvertently intensify it by priming the existence of corruption while failing to diminish citizens beliefs about government misbehavior. Building on...

This paper analyzes the effects of a firm-size dependent law, on the Mexican economy which includes a small taxpayers' regime known in Mexico as the Repecos regime. It looks for effects on macroeconomic variables and on the industrial structure, on the proportion of small firms in the economy,...

This paper shows that workers who do not receive legally mandated benefits due to employer noncompliance have a negative view not only of their employers, as has been documented, but also of the State. Those workers believe that the State did not protect their rights, and hence they feel fewer...

This paper address options for restructuring the revenue system of Bolivia's subnational governments, particularly prefectures, emphasizing reduction of dependence on natural resources and strengthening of subnational tax autonomy. The paper additionally identifies tax instruments or tax bases...

Tax evasion is a pervasive problem in many countries. In particular, some developing countries do not collect even half of what they would if taxpayers complied with the written letter of the law. The academic literature has not been oblivious to the need to explain why people pay (or do not...

We present new evidence that a non-threatening behavioral intervention appealing to reciprocity significantly increases tax compliance in a setting (i.e., crisis-ridden Argentina) where one might least expect such an intervention to succeed. Prior research offers many examples of the efficacy of...

Many countries worldwide face significant miss reporting in tax declarations. Miss reporting leads to undesired low revenue and economic distortions. This paper discusses the extent to which the residual bookkeeping burden faced by small firms in simplified regimes influence tax declarations. A...