Old George Orwell Got it Backward: Some Thoughts on Behavioral Tax Economics

Joel Slemrod ()

No CESifo Working Paper No. 2777, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Group Munich

Abstract: It is entirely appropriate that the study of public finance take seriously “behavioral” inconsistencies with traditional models of individual and collective decision-making. This raises the question of whether the state should play a role in protecting individuals from themselves, and whether individuals are susceptible to manipulation, or even exploitation, by the people who comprise the state. In this essay I address one aspect of this issue – how it affects an economic analysis of tax systems. In addressing this task I ask, and offer some tentative answers to, what is distinctive about behavioral tax economics as a sub-field of behavioral economics and as a sub-field of tax economics.

Keywords: complexity; compliance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H20 H27 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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