@article{b3221ebace414102ac0a53b3104dd696,
title = "The ghost of institutions past: History as an obstacle to fighting tax evasion?",
abstract = "Can a history of evasion affect tax compliance after a major institutional reform? We address this question in a novel laboratory experiment varying the quality of past and present institutions. We find that past institutions continue to exert considerable influence on individuals{\textquoteright} expectations about others{\textquoteright} compliance even after a major, common-knowledge institutional change. Consequently, we observe low compliance in good-quality institutions when there is a history of evasion, but high compliance when there is no such history. These findings suggest that history should not be ignored as it is in traditional models of compliance: the higher evasion has been historically, the stronger incentives may need to be to overcome the “ghost of institutions past”. We show that a society-wide poll in which individuals express their attitudes toward compliance can help break the link with the past.",
keywords = "Experiment, Interdependence, Multiple equilibria, Path dependence, Tax evasion",
author = "Aaron Kamm and Christian Koch and Nikos Nikiforakis",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful for valuable comments by two anonymous referees, the EER editors and Dirk Engelmann, as well as (seminar) participants at NYU Abu Dhabi, LMU Munich, HU Berlin, University of Vienna, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, the 2016 World Meeting of the Economic Science Association (Jerusalem), the 2016 workshop on “Enacting change in long-run behavior and attitudes” (Berlin), the 2017 International Symposium for Experimental Economics (Abu Dhabi), the 2017 European Public Choice Society Annual Meeting (Budapest), the 2017 International Meeting on Experimental and Behavioral Social Sciences (Barcelona), the 2017 World Meeting of the Economic Science Association (San Diego), the 2017 Verein f{\"u}r Socialpolitik (Vienna), the 2017 European Meeting of the Economic Science Association (Vienna), and the 2018 Meeting of the European Economic Association (Cologne). Declarations of interest: none. Nikiforakis gratefully recognizes financial support by Tamkeen under the NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute Award CG005. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020",
year = "2021",
month = feb,
doi = "10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103641",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "132",
journal = "European Economic Review",
issn = "0014-2921",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}