115th Annual Conference Saturday Afternoon Short Course

The Saturday Afternoon Short Course sponsored by the University of Michigan Office of Tax Policy Research entitled Tax Compliance and Tax Morale, will be  led by Ricardo Perez-Truglia, Associate Professor of Economic Analysis & Policy, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. It will run from 1:00 to 2:30 pm, on Saturday, November 12th.

Short abstract: 

This short course will discuss recent advances in the literature on tax compliance and tax morale. The ability to collect taxes is a critical part of state capacity. However, some governments are a lot more successful than others are getting their taxpayers to fulfill their tax obligations. Historically, institutions and tax morale are the two main channels that are suspected to explain differences in tax compliance. While there is abundant cutting-edge research showing that institutions matter, there is scant evidence on the tax morale channel. This talk will summarize a few recent studies attempting to fill this gap in the literature, with a special focus on the conceptual and methodological challenges that the literature faces. This talk will hopefully highlight interesting question for future research, as well as methodological innovations to tackle those questions.