The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime.

Research on the effects of audits on individual compliance has been inconclusive. In this paper, we analyze for the fi rst time VAT tax return information and enforcement data to assess the impact of audits on subsequent compliance of taxpayers in Argentina and Chile. The evidence of this unique data set shows that audits have the undesired effect of furthering noncompliance behavior among cheaters but a more positive effect among those prone to compliance. Descriptive and multivariate analysis supports the assumption that the effects of additional assessments on individuals are offset by higher subsequent evasion presumably to compensate for taxpayers' costs incurred in audits.

This article compares the effects of tax reform on tax compliance in Argentina and Chile. After constructing three different comparative indexes of tax compliance, it proposes a comprehensive approach, which includes political, economic and sociological explanations to address the different behaviour of taxpayers in each country. It concludes that Chile was able to enhance better tax compliance because it has implemented a permanent, stable and rational policy that allowed for the development of an effective tax administration -a process never fully accomplished in Argentina. Tax reforms may enhance better compliance only after they reverse the entrenched evasion strategies of the taxpayers. * The author is grateful for the comments of two anonymous JLAS reviewers.

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