We analyze the effect of mandatory financial transparency on corporate tax avoidance. Capital Requirements Directive IV by the European Commission required multinational banks to publish key financial and tax data in the form of public Country-by-Country Reporting. We examine tax avoidance of...

In a simple cash-credit model, I study the effects of the combination of costly tax collection and tax evasion on fiscal and monetary policy for optimal resource allocation. Allowing the informal sector to use cash more intensively than the formal sector, I compute the optimal interest and tax...

In a simple cash-credit model, I study the effects of the combination of costly tax collection and tax evasion on fiscal and monetary policy for optimal resource allocation. Allowing the informal sector to use cash more intensively than the formal sector, I compute the optimal interest and tax...

Over millennia, mankind has used hard cash in various forms ranging from shells to gold coins and paper. More recently, cash has become unpopular in political circles, as it effectively restricts states’ power to tax (explicitly or via negative interest rates) or to survey and potentially...

Can introducing Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) improve social welfare? We construct a dual currency model to study whether introducing CBDC with a record- keeping technology can reduce tax evasion incentives, and further achieve a better al- location than in a cash-only economy. In our...

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...

How does economic activity outside of government control-informality-affect the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy? I study this question in a New Keynesian, small open economy model. The model is assumed to feature informality in both goods and labor markets. A non-traded sector produces a...

On November 8, 2016, the Indian government made a surprise announcement that certain currency notes (representing 86% of the currency then in circulation) would no longer be legal tender (although they could be deposited in banks over a limited period). The stated reason for this sudden...

This paper studies the implications of tax evasion for the optimal design of central bank digital currency (CBDC). I build a general equilibrium framework to explicitly allow tax evasion by agents and tax audits by a government. I find that as long as CBDC offers less anonymity than cash,...