Publications of the Research Unit Corporate Taxation and Public Finance

  1. Refereed Journal // forthcoming

    Nudging for Tax Compliance: a Meta-Analysis

    Governments increasingly use nudges to improve tax collection. We synthesise the growing literature on nudging experiments using meta-analytical methods. We find that, relative to the baseline where about a…

  2. 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…

  3. 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…

  4. 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…

  5. 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…

  6. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-059 // 2025

    Doubling Down Political Budget Cycles: The Role of State-Owned Enterprises

    We study the degree and nature of political budget cycles in public investments when two instruments are available: investments by core governments and, more indirectly, by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While…