To fight the spread of COVID-19, many countries implemented social distancing policies. This is the first paper that examines the effects of the German social distancing policies on behavior and the epidemic’s spread. Exploiting the staggered timing of COVID-19 outbreaks in extended event-study models, we find that the policies heavily reduced mobility and contagion. In comparison to a no-social-distancing benchmark, within three weeks, the policies avoided 84% of the potential COVID-19 cases (point estimate: 499.3K) and 66% of the potential fatalities (5.4K). The policies’ relative effects were smaller for individuals above 60 and in rural areas.

No abstract

In a laboratory experiment on tax compliance, we model a situation in which high-income taxpayers can leave a tax system that finances a public good. We compare low-income taxpayers’ compliance decisions and equity perceptions across treatments in which they are informed or not informed about the mobility option of high-income taxpayers. This allows us to test if low-income taxpayers regard the mobility option as a rationale for implementing a regressive tax schedule. To investigate if a potential `justification effect’ of the mobility option depends on the causes of income heterogeneity, we also varied whether income was allocated based on relative performance in a prior ability task or at random. Interestingly, although the performance-based allocation itself was judged to be fairer, we observed higher compliance under the random allocation mechanism. However, compliance and equity perceptions did not significantly differ by the information treatment variation, regardless of the source of income inequality. The results indicate that the threat of losing high-income taxpayers’ contributions does not lead low-income taxpayers to view the regressive tax schedule more favorably. This suggests that taking the differential mobility options as given and altering tax schedules accordingly may not be perceived as an adequate policy response.

We present new evidence that a non-threatening behavioral intervention appealing to reciprocity significantly increases tax compliance in a setting (i.e., crisisridden Argentina) where one might least expect such an intervention to succeed. Prior research offers many examples of the efficacy of more threatening deterrence approaches. In contrast, field experimental evidence for non-deterrence nudges such as those appealing to taxpayers' feelings of reciprocity ("fiscal exchange") has been limited. This paper reports evidence from a randomized controlled trial with over 20,000 taxpayers in Argentina. A redesigned tax bill with fiscal exchange appeal increased payment rates of tax delinquents by about 20 percent, or almost 40 percent when the bills were delivered in person. With the fiscal exchange appeal, the new bill design elicited significantly more payments than without. The unfavorable economic crisis context in Argentina makes the impacts remarkable. We hypothesize that having children as beneficiaries, the visual form of the appeal, and the proximity between taxpayers and public services in the municipal setting have contributed to the positive compliance impacts.

The desirability of a particular tax system depends on how different taxpayers react to it. Exploiting the personal allowance threshold and detailed German tax administration data, this paper examines responses at low taxable incomes to extend previous findings. Taxpayers bunch at the allowance threshold, and more so with non‐wage income. Unlike in other studies, wage earners also bunch, at least if they file a tax return, while incomes gross of deductions do not. Deductions account for a sizeable share of the sharp bunching mass of taxpayers with non‐wage income. A machine learning analysis identifies which deduction items predict such sharp bunching. The pattern of results suggests that local intensive‐margin real responses induce moderate deadweight loss.