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 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...

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...

Improving tax collection is essential if developing economies are to avoid over-reliance on external donor funds and loans. Revenue authorities in the Global South have recently adopted new policy tools to improve domestic revenue mobilization through taxes. One such new policy is a withholding...

The ability of a tax authority to successfully collect taxes depends critically on both its relationship with the taxpayers and how strongly these taxpayers are committed to contributing to the common good. We present evidence on a new non-intrusive approach aimed at fostering the commitment to...

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...

The so called classic model of tax compliance behaviour interprets the problem as an individual decision under risk made by a single taxpayer. After a concise description of this model our literature survey investigates whether the empirical results found in the literature corroborate the...

This paper investigates how tax rates and tax enforcement jointly impact fiscal capacity in low-income countries. We study a policy experiment in the D.R. Congo that randomly assigned 38,028 property owners to the status quo tax rate or to a rate reduction. This variation in tax liabilities...

A large body of research has estimated the effects on tax collection of informing taxpayers of their obligations. This paper examines the effects on voluntary tax payments of providing taxpayers with information on their obligations that is collected through massive information cross-checking...

This paper provides theoretical and empirical evidence on the implications of the timing of reminders by studying the effect of varying the timing of reminder letters to taxpayers on their payment behavior. The collection of unpaid tax debts constitutes a considerable challenge for tax...