When Do Beliefs, About the Values of Others, Affect Tax Compliance and Honesty?
75 Pages Posted: 19 Jan 2022
Date Written: January 19, 2022
Abstract
When do ex-ante beliefs about the values of others affect compliance and honesty? To answer this question, we conduct an experiment, in which subjects face repeated trade-offs between monetary gain and honesty. As a source of exogenous variation, half of the subjects were told that their choices would be shared with the other subjects in the room. We show that: 1) the belief that peers value honesty more, (only) leads to a crowding-in effect when these subjects know that their choices will become public. 2) the crowding-in effect is dependent on ex-ante beliefs about the values of others.
Keywords: Social Norms, Injunctive Norms, Tax Compliance, Honesty
JEL Classification: C91, C92, H26, A13, C35
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation