A pair of randomized interventions were implemented in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, to test whether empowering citizens changes how they interact financially with the state. One intervention provided information on statutory payment obligations; the other offered protection from abusive or opportunistic state officials.
This study asks how cross-border labor migration changes migrants’ redistribution preferences, comparing migrants themselves to their left-behind family members. Using a randomized intervention that facilitated labor migration from India to the Middle East, the authors test whether moving alters support for taxation and redistribution and explore mechanisms tied to economic gains, self-reliance, and expectations of upward mobility.
This paper argues tax policy often fails to respond to inequality because many voters adhere to equal treatment fairness beliefs, expecting the state to treat all citizens equally on other dimensions - including through uniform taxation.
Taxpayers often hide true income because admitting evasion is socially undesirable, so identifying noncompliance is difficult. This study uses a list experiment to reduce social desirability bias and uncover who is most likely to underreport income on tax returns.
Standard repression-or-concession models assume the state can either punish or co-opt dissent. This study shows a different dynamic: when the colonial state was weak it often withdrew authority instead.
This research tests whether expanding formal taxation in a fragile state prompts citizens to demand a greater voice in government. The central claim is that bringing citizens into the tax base generates a measurable "participation dividend."
A new study explores how voters respond to ballot propositions requiring tax dollars. Using original experimental data, it examines the effect of language specificity on voter support.
Reexamines the connection between war and state-making by comparing two prominent modes of war finance: taxation and foreign borrowing. Financing war with taxes strengthens the state's ability to assess wealth and monitor compliance—core elements of fiscal capacity—and encourages the adoption of power-sharing institutions that make taxation a non-zero-sum bargain, extending war’s institutional effects into the long run. By contrast, financing war with external capital can fail to produce lasting fiscal capacity when borrowers interrupt debt service and default settlements result in war debt being condoned or swapped for nontax revenue.