Reducing tax evasion is a key priority for many governments, particularly in developing countries. A growing literature has argued that the ability to verify taxpayer self-reports against reports from third parties is critical for modern tax enforcement and the growth of state capacity. However,...

Reducing tax evasion is a key priority for many governments, particularly in developing countries. A growing literature has argued that the ability to verify taxpayer self-reports against reports from third parties is critical for modern tax enforcement and the growth of state capacity. However,...

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) represents a novel tax expenditure program that employs quot;investablequot; tax credits to spur production of low-income rental housing. While it has grown into the largest source of new affordable housing in the U.S. and its structure is now being...

Poverty is often characterized not only by low and unstable income, but also by heavy debt burdens. We find that reducing barriers to saving through access to free savings accounts decreases participants' short-term debt by about 20%. In addition, participants who experience an economic shock...

We test the effectiveness of self-help peer groups as a commitment device for precautionary savings, through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microentrepreneurs in Chile. The first experiment finds that self-help peer groups are a powerful tool to increase savings (the number of...

Tax evasion generates billions of dollars of losses in government revenue and creates large distortions, especially in developing countries. Claims that the VAT facilitates tax enforcement by generating paper trails on transactions between firms have contributed to widespread VAT adoption...

Poverty is often characterized not only by low and unstable income, but also by heavy debt burdens. We find that reducing barriers to saving through access to free savings accounts decreases participants' short-term debt by about 20%. In addition, participants who experience an economic shock...

This book provides a detailed microeconomic analysis of the impact of various privatizations in different countries in the region. Its central message is that in many cases, contrary to popular belief, society as a whole and in particular the poor have benefited from privatization. The book...

Current explanations for the high rate of default and foreclosure in the U.S. emphasize house price fluctuations and lax lending criteria. Another explanation for default and foreclosure, which has generally been neglected in the academic literature but not by the FBI, is fraud. One impediment...

We employ unconditional quantile-decomposition methods to analyze the gender wage gap (<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">gwg) in the urban region of twelve Latin American countries. Using data from harmonized household surveys we decompose the <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">gwg into an explained component (differences in human capital) and an unexplained...</emphasis></emphasis>