Publications of the Research Unit Corporate Taxation and Public Finance

  1. Refereed Journal // 2026

    I'm a taxpayer … get me out of here? Evidence on attitudes towards simplifying the tax jungle

    Why are tax systems complex despite a conventional wisdom that simplification is desirable? We study attitudes towards tax simplification using new survey and experimental data. We first document that most…

  2. Refereed Journal // 2026

    The EU’s new era of “fair company taxation”: the impact of DEBRA and Pillar Two on the EU Member States’ effective tax rates

    The European Union (EU) recently implemented the Minimum Tax Directive (Pillar Two) to ensure that profits of large companies are at least taxed at 15%. At the same time, the European Commission proposed the…

  3. Refereed Journal // 2025

    The global software production network

    Can developing countries benefit from exporting opportunities in the growing sector of tradable services, given the near free information flow via the internet and wage differentials relative to developed…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-070 // 2025

    Inference for Batched Adaptive Experiments

    The advantages of adaptive experiments have led to their rapid adoption in economics, other fields, as well as among practitioners. However, adaptive experiments pose challenges for causal inference. This note…

  5. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-068 // 2025

    VAT Collection Only at the Retail Stage: Evidence on Tax Compliance

    We investigate whether firms engage in VAT evasion at the retail stage—typically a point of weakness in VAT systems—in a high-enforcement, low-informality setting. To measure evasion, we exploit a reform of VAT…

  6. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-067 // 2025

    Harnessing Deductions to Increase Tax Compliance and Formalization

    We evaluate a tax reform in Ecuador that introduced generous deductions from personal income taxes (PIT), encouraging consumers to request receipts. The reform addresses tax evasion by targeting small…

  7. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-066 // 2025

    Effects of the Reverse Charge Mechanism on VAT Gaps

    The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of reverse-charge mechanism (RCM) implementation on VAT compliance using an overall, countrylevel measure of VAT compliance, the VAT gap. The VAT gap is…