OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
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This paper discusses the relationship between individual attitudes towards the social contract and tax morale in low-capacity states. Using data from an original survey experiment fielded in Mexico, we argue that, in contexts of weak state capacity and low norms of tax compliance, many individuals opt-out of the social contract. That is, they prefer to substitute state-provided goods for private providers, rather than pay for public goods through taxes or free-ride to receive those goods. Using a list experiment to elicit willingness to pay or evade taxes, (a technique that has not yet been applied to the study of tax morale), we demonstrate that tax morale is lower when individuals have stepped outside of the welfare state and have access to private insurance mechanisms. We bolster our experimental results with observational data from seventeen Latin American cities; those with access to employer-sponsored insurance are more willing to evade tax.