Experimental Trends in Corruption and Tax Evasion

Abstract

Nowadays, among the main social concerns of the Spanish society we find corruption and fraud, which occupy the second place in terms of relevance according to recent data. The traditional neoclassical economic approaches concentrate on the construction of economic models that aim to explain the causes of both social phenomena. However, in the last decade several studies have emerged focusing on a behavioral approach to improve the explanatory capacity of such models. In this sense, economic experiments have been implemented to examine, from a different perspective, the determinants of corruption, on the one hand, and fiscal fraud, on the other. Few empirical studies relate both social problems, especially when we refer to the tax evasion of individual economic agents. Therefore, this paper aims to review and deepen the understanding of the factors that determine and relate tax evasion and corruption, from an experimental approach.