The Political Economy of Tax Evasion

POLISCI 249R is an undergraduate seminar on the political economy of tax evasion and avoidance. The course starts from a deceptively simple puzzle: states need revenue, and yet they routinely tolerate, enable, or actively construct opportunities for noncompliance. Students work through the major theoretical traditions on taxation and state capacity, and then turn to specific instruments — withholding, third-party reporting, amnesties, audits, naming-and-shaming policies — to ask how political coalitions shape what gets enforced and what gets quietly waived.

The seminar is empirically grounded in cross-country evidence and in-depth cases, drawing on the data collection and case work behind my book project on enforcement politics. Half of each session is devoted to discussion of the assigned readings; the other half is dedicated to short student-led presentations that test the arguments against new examples. Students leave with a working command of one of the most consequential — and least visible — domains of contemporary political economy.