Governments around the world increasingly use nudges to improve tax collection. Our meta-analysis evaluates the evidence gained from around 70 recent randomized trials. We find that simple reminders, tax morale, and deterrence nudges all increase tax compliance. The effectiveness of these...

This paper aims at studying the connection between reference group income and life satisfaction in the three republics of the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. I illustrate that in low-income transition economies individuals make not only upward comparisons, decreasing their...

This paper aims to study the impact of positional concerns on social preferences and social capital. We utilize data from the “Caucasus Barometer” survey administered in three post-Soviet transition economies: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Controlling for absolute income and other...

Governments around the world increasingly use nudges to improve tax collection. Our meta-analysis evaluates the evidence gained from around 70 recent randomized trials. We find that simple reminders, tax morale, and deterrence nudges all increase tax compliance. The effectiveness of these...

We assess the impact of reminder frequency on the probability of paying overdue property taxes in a randomized controlled trial in China. One reminder a week (sent as a text message) considerably increases the probability of tax compliance and results in tangible fiscal gains compared to a...

Policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions. However, no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries. This paper explores the honesty among citizens across sixteen countries with...

Taxpayer nudges - behavioral interventions that aim to increase tax compliance without changing the underlying economic incentives of taxpayers - are used increasingly by governments because of their potential cost-effectiveness in raising tax revenue. We collect about a thousand treatment...