This paper incorporates the incentives of tax inspectors into an equilibrium model of tax compliance and enforcement when the taxpayers' true income is private information (adverse selection) and the effort of tax inspectors to verify reported income is unobservable (moral hazard). It...

This paper reviews recent economic research in tax compliance and enforcement. After briefly laying out the economics of tax evasion, it focuses on recent empirical contributions. It first discusses what methodologies and data have facilitated these contributions, and then presents critical...

We study tax compliance under decentralized versus centralized tax enforcement. Using a tax administration reform in Canada, we examine which organizational level of tax enforcement leads to higher compliance. Our results show that there is more tax avoidance under centralized tax enforcement....

The United States Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has repeatedly taken the position that, because the IRS does not ask taxpayers to identify their race or ethnicity on submitted tax returns, IRS enforcement actions are not affected by taxpayers' race or ethnicity. This claim, which I call...

Lawmakers, prosecutors, homeowners, policymakers, investors, news media, scholars and other commentators have examined, litigated, and reported on the role that residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) played in the 2008 financial crisis. Big banks create RMBS by pooling mortgage notes into...