IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v42y2004i1p69-87.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Good, the Bad, and the Regulator: An Experimental Test of Two Conditional Audit Schemes

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy Clark
  • Lana Friesen
  • Andrew Muller

Abstract

Conditional audit rules are designed to achieve regulatory compliance with fewer inspections than required by random auditing. A regulator places individuals into audit pools that differ in probability of audit or severity of fine and specifies transition rules between pools. Future pool assignment is conditional on current audit results. We conduct an experiment to compare two specific schemes--Harrington's Past-Compliance Targeting and Friesen's Optimal Targeting--against random auditing. We find a production possibility frontier between compliance and minimizing inspections. Optimal targeting generates the lowest inspection rates as predicted, but random auditing the highest compliance. Past-compliance targeting is intermediate. (JEL C91, H26, K42, L51) Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Clark & Lana Friesen & Andrew Muller, 2004. "The Good, the Bad, and the Regulator: An Experimental Test of Two Conditional Audit Schemes," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 69-87, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:42:y:2004:i:1:p:69-87
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ei/cbh045
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Masclet, David & Montmarquette, Claude & Viennot-Briot, Nathalie, 2019. "Can whistleblower programs reduce tax evasion? Experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Christian A. Vossler & Scott M. Gilpatric, 2017. "Endogenous Tax Audits and Taxpayer Assistance Services: Theory and Experiments," Working Papers 2017-01, University of Tennessee, Department of Economics.
    3. Meinarni Asnawi, 2016. "Tax Compliance Decision Analysis: Audit Strategy, Audit Rate, Perceived Probability of Audit, and Taxpayer Ethics," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 8(3), pages 11-21.
    4. Kogler, Christoph & Batrancea, Larissa & Nichita, Anca & Pantya, Jozsef & Belianin, Alexis & Kirchler, Erich, 2013. "Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance: Testing the assumptions of the slippery slope framework in Austria, Hungary, Romania and Russia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 169-180.
    5. Lindeboom, Maarten & van der Klaauw, Bas & Vriend, Sandra, 2020. "Audit regimes in long-term care," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 272-298.
    6. Earnhart, Dietrich & Friesen, Lana, 2021. "Use of competitive endogenous audit mechanisms by federal and state inspectors within environmental protection agencies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    7. Bayer, Ralph & Cowell, Frank, 2009. "Tax compliance and firms' strategic interdependence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1131-1143, December.
    8. Yoshio Kamijo & Takehito Masuda & Hiroshi Uemura, 2015. "Who is audited? Experimental study on rule-based and human tax auditing schemes," Working Papers SDES-2015-9, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Jan 2015.
    9. Hernández, Wilson, 2019. "Do criminal justice reforms reduce crime and perceived risk of crime? A quasi-experimental approach in Peru," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 89-100.
    10. Lana Friesen, 2012. "Certainty of Punishment versus Severity of Punishment: An Experimental Investigation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(2), pages 399-421, October.
    11. Timothy N. Cason & Lana Friesen & Lata Gangadharan, 2021. "Complying with environmental regulations: experimental evidence," Chapters, in: Ananish Chaudhuri (ed.), A Research Agenda for Experimental Economics, chapter 4, pages 69-92, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Lindeboom, Maarten & van der Klaauw, Bas & Vriend, Sandra, 2016. "Audit rates and compliance: A field experiment in care provision," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PB), pages 160-173.
    13. Timothy N. Cason & Lata Gangadharan, 2006. "An Experimental Study of Compliance and Leverage in Auditing and Regulatory Enforcement," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(2), pages 352-366, April.
    14. Tan, Fangfang & Yim, Andrew, 2014. "Can strategic uncertainty help deter tax evasion? An experiment on auditing rules," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 161-174.
    15. Maarten Lindeboom & Bas van der Klaauw & Sandra Vriend, 2014. "Audit Rates and Compliance: A Field Experiment in Long-term Care," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-038/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Coria, Jessica & Zhang, Xiao-Bing, 2015. "The Harrington Paradox Squared," Working Papers in Economics 608, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    17. Li-Chen Hsu, 2013. "Tax Auditing as a Public Good Game: An Experimental Study on Punishment and Compliance," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(4), pages 475-501, October.
    18. Heike Hennig‐Schmidt & Hendrik Jürges & Daniel Wiesen, 2019. "Dishonesty in health care practice: A behavioral experiment on upcoding in neonatology," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 319-338, March.
    19. Vossler, Christian A. & Gilpatric, Scott M., 2018. "Endogenous audits, uncertainty, and taxpayer assistance services: Theory and experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 217-229.
    20. Gilpatric, Scott M. & Vossler, Christian A. & Liu, Lirong, 2015. "Using competition to stimulate regulatory compliance: A tournament-based dynamic targeting mechanism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 182-196.
    21. Evan M. Calford & Gregory DeAngelo, 2023. "Ambiguity and enforcement," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 304-338, April.
    22. Batrancea, Larissa & Nichita, Anca & Olsen, Jerome & Kogler, Christoph & Kirchler, Erich & Hoelzl, Erik & Weiss, Avi & Torgler, Benno & Fooken, Jonas & Fuller, Joanne & Schaffner, Markus & Banuri, She, 2019. "Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance across 44 nations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:42:y:2004:i:1:p:69-87. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.