Since the seminal work of Ramsey (1927) and especially Diamond and Mirrlees (1971), a large body of literature has striven to identify rules characterizing optimal tax structures. The fundamental limitation of such an approach has been the lack of information necessary to implement the rules...

The authors build on the work of Engelmann and Strobel and of Ackert, Martinez-Vazquez, and Rider to examine the potential role of social preferences in tax policy design. They randomly assign each participant in a session to a group with five members. The payoffs to participants are determined...

In this paper, we examine the theoretical and empirical implications of accounting for multiple modes of tax evasion. We find that increasing the probability of detection in a given mode has an ambiguous effect on compliance in the targeted mode as well as the untargeted mode. In order to gain...

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought enormous political, economic, and social challenges. During the transition from 1991 to the present, fiscal reform has been a pillar of Russia’s reform agenda. This book analyzes the effort to adopt a modern tax code where previously there were few...

We use an experimental method to investigate whether systematic relationships exist across distinct aspects of individual preferences: risk aversion in monetary outcomes, altruism in a twoperson context, and social preferences in a larger group context. Individual preferences across these three...

The goal of this paper is to revisit the issue of the appropriate assignment of the property tax within the context of a fiscally decentralized system. We examine whether the conventional wisdom of assigning property taxes to local governments is the right one. Particularly in light of the...

In 2001 the Russian government introduced a bold reform of its tax system, which included the adoption of a flat-rate income tax. Until then, only a few countries, including the transition countries of Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania , had adopted a flat-rate income tax. This reform has...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts can increase tax compliance. However, there must be other forces at work because observed compliance levels cannot be fully explained by the level of enforcement actions typical of most tax authorities. Further, there are observed...