TY  - JOUR
AU  - DeBacker, Jason M
AU  - Heim, Bradley T
AU  - Tran, Anh
TI  - Importing Corruption Culture from Overseas: Evidence from Corporate Tax Evasion in the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17770
PY  - 2012
Y2  - January 2012
DO  - 10.3386/w17770
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17770
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17770.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jason M. DeBacker
Department of Economics
Darla Moore School of Business
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
E-Mail: jason.debacker@moore.sc.edu

Bradley Heim
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
1315 E 10th St
Bloomington, IN 47405
India
Tel: 812-855-9783
E-Mail: heimb@indiana.edu

Anh Tran
1315 E. 10th St
SPEA Room 410J
Bloomington, IN 47405
E-Mail: trananh@indiana.edu
M1  - published as Jason DeBacker, Bradley T. Heim, Anh Tran. "Importing Corruption Culture from Overseas: Evidence from Corporate Tax Evasion in the United States," in Luigi Zingales and James Poterba, organizers, "Causes and Consequences of Corporate Culture" Elsevier, Journal of Financial Economics 117(1) (2015)

M3  - presented at "Causes and Consequences of Corporate Culture", December 8-9, 2011
AB  - This paper studies how cultural norms and enforcement policies influence illicit corporate activities. Using confidential IRS audit data, we show that corporations with owners from countries with higher corruption norms engage in higher amounts of tax evasion in the U.S. This effect is strong for small corporations and decreases as the size of the corporation increases. In the mid-2000s, the United States implemented several enforcement measures which significantly increased tax compliance.  However, we find that these enforcement efforts were less effective in reducing tax evasion by corporations whose owners are from countries with higher corruption norms. This suggests that cultural norms can be a challenge to legal enforcement.
ER  -