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Cover of: Old George Orwell Got It Backward: Some Thoughts on Behavioral Tax Economics
Joel Slemrod

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

Section: Papers from the CESifo Workshop on Behavioural Public Economics
Volume 66 (2010) / Issue 1, pp. 15-33 (19)
Published 09.07.2018
DOI 10.1628/001522110X503361
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Summary
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 two aspects of this issue – tax complexity and tax compliance. In addressing these issues 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.