Undeterred: Joel Slemrod and the Evolution of Tax Evasion Research

This article reviews the last few decades of research on tax evasion, focusing on the contributions of Joel Slemrod. Slemrod’s work greatly expanded the economists’ toolkit for studying tax evasion, including the implementation of field experiments in collaboration with tax authorities, forensic approaches to detecting the traces of tax evasion in observational data, and the use of administrative data to evaluate enforcement policies. Employing these empirical tools deepened our theoretical understanding of tax evasion beyond simple deterrence theory, incorporating more realistic information structures, behavioral and social motivations, and administrative frictions.