学术活动

标题:

日期和时间: 

2025年3月27日 (周四) 

10:00 - 11:30 

地点

综合教学楼D202教室

主讲人:

Marco Gonzalez-Navarro教授

加州大学伯克利分校

Many developing countries face a challenge whereby low tax compliance limits governments’ ability to provide public goods, while at the same time, inadequate public good provision discourages tax compliance. We examine whether a prominent local public infrastructure program can disrupt this vicious cycle through a randomized trial of first time street pavement projects in Acayucan, Mexico. Among 56 eligible street projects in poor neighborhoods, 28 were randomly selected for pavement. We analyze administrative property tax records to determine if tax compliance increased as a result. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a theoretical model incorporating two key mechanisms: updating of beliefs about government expenditure efficiency and direct benefits from infrastructure improvements that elicit a reciprocity to comply. We find that property owners adjacent to newly paved streets (capturing private benefit effects) increase tax compliance by 4.7 percentage points (ITT) to 7.7 percentage points (LATE), corresponding to a 5.5–9.0% rise over baseline compliance rates. In addition, property owners exposed to pavement projects in their trajectory to downtown also show increased compliance (consistent with belief updating), with a one standard deviation increase in exposure raising compliance by 2.3-3.8 percentage points. In line with model predictions, we find that treatment effects are more pronounced among individuals with lower initial government satisfaction. Our findings indicate the delivery of public goods can enhance tax compliance by delivering direct benefits as well as improving perceptions of government efficiency. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that belief updating from citizens observing the pavement projects generates twice as much tax revenue as reciprocity effects from direct beneficiaries lining newly paved streets.

主讲人简介:

Marco Gonzalez-Navarro是加州大学伯克利分校国际可持续发展领域 George Pardee Jr. Family 讲席副教授。他的研究主要集中在发展经济学、城市经济学和政治经济学领域。他在普林斯顿大学获得经济学博士学位。目前，他担任Journal of Development Economics的联合主编、Regional Science and Urban Economics的副主编，以及Journal of Urban Economics的编委会成员。他同时是J-PAL（全球减贫行动实验室）、CEGA（加州大学伯克利分校全球发展中心）和BREAD（经济学研究与分析发展局）的成员。