This paper studies the first large scale effort by the Brazilian government to increase the social security compliance of self-employed workers using behavioral interventions. In 2014, the Brazilian Ministry of Social Security gradually delivered by postal mail a booklet reminding nearly 3...

The paper applies two commonly used methods in the literature to estimate the shadow economy in Malta, the Currency Demand Approach and the Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model. Given the unobservable nature of the shadow economy, estimates are surrounded by a considerable degree of...

This paper investigates the effect of electronic payments technology on firms’ tax compliance in a large developing economy. We consider India’s demonetization policy which, by limiting the availability of cash, led to a large increase in the use of electronic forms of payments. Using...

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...

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...

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...

We set up a framework to conduct experiments for estimating spillover effects when units are grouped into mutually exclusive clusters. We improve upon existing methods by allowing for heteroskedasticity, intra-cluster correlation and cluster size heterogeneity, which are typically ignored when...

This paper investigates the effect of electronic payment technology on tax compliance in a large developing economy. We consider India's demonetization policy which, by limiting cash availability, led to a large increase in the use of electronic forms of payments. Using administrative data on...

We develop a framework to conduct experiments for estimating direct and spillover effects when units are grouped into mutually exclusive clusters. Crucially, our framework accounts for heterogeneous treatment effects across clusters and heterogeneous cluster sizes, which are pervasive in...

There is an ample literature on the determinants of tax compliance. Several field experiments have evaluated the effect and comparative relevance of sending deterrence and moral suasion messages to taxpayers. The effect of different delivery mechanisms, however, has not been evaluated so far....