How costly is the misallocation of production that we might expect to result from distortions such as market power, incomplete contracts, taxes, regulations, or corruption? This paper develops new tools for the study of misallocation that place minimal assumptions on firms' underlying...

Profit shifting by multinational corporations is thought to reduce tax revenue around the world. While transfer pricing regulations are meant to curtail profit shifting, there have been rising concerns that a sophisticated tax advisory industry can limit their effectiveness. This paper provides...

While commitment devices such as defaults and direct deposits from wages have been found to be highly effective to increase savings, they are unavailable to the millions of people worldwide who not have a formal wage bill. Self-help peer groups are an alternative commitment device that is...

This paper studies the effects of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the school environment on educational achievement. To quantify these effects, the impact is evaluated of a project run by the municipality of Guayaquil, Ecuador, which provides computer-aided instruction in...

This paper evaluates the effect of positive inducements on tax behavior by exploiting a natural experiment in which a municipality of Argentina randomly selected 400 individuals among more than 72,000 taxpayers who had complied with payment of their property tax. These individuals were publicly...

When consumption of water and other utilities is measured collectively and payment for such services is equally shared among members of the group, individuals may use more than what is socially optimal. In this paper, we evaluate how installation of individual meters affects water consumption....

Driving restriction programs have been implemented in many cities around the world to alleviate pollution and congestion problems. Enforcement of such programs is costly and can potentially displace policing resources used for crime prevention and crime detection. Hence, driving restrictions may...

In-kind transfers can provide insurance benefits when prices of consumption goods vary, as is common in developing countries. We develop a model demonstrating that in-kind transfers are welfare improving to beneficiaries relative to cash if the covariance between the marginal utility of income...

Standard economic models of tax compliance have focused on enforcement-driven compliance. Notably, tax administrators also tend to place a great deal of emphasis on the importance of improving "tax morale" by encouraging voluntary compliance, creating a culture of compliance, and changing social...