The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 105 No. 4 2023

Norms, Enforcement, and Tax Evasion

Timothy Besley¹; Anders Jensen²; Torsten Persson³

¹ LSE and CIFAR · ² Harvard Kennedy School and NBER · ³ IIES and CIFAR

Abstract

This paper studies individual and social motives in tax evasion. We build a simple dynamic model that incorporates these motives and their interaction. The social motives underpin the role of norms and are the source of the dynamics that we study. Our empirical analysis exploits the adoption in 1990 of a poll tax to fund local government in the United Kingdom, which led to widespread evasion. The evidence is consistent with the model's main predictions on the dynamics of evasion.

DOI

10.1162/rest_a_01123

Volume

105

Issue

4

Pages

998-1007

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓