Berkes, EnricoMarchingiglio, Riccardo2023-11-132023-11-132017-07-07http://hdl.handle.net/11603/30712We study the relationship between local corruption and income misreporting in the context of the EITC program. Using a newly assembled dataset of corruption at the MSA level, we observe that public officials’ corruption predicts more than 70% of the variation in bunching in the distribution of EITC-eligible self-employed workers’ reported income. Using a research design that exploits exogenous variation in institutional accountability, we find that a one standard deviation rise in our corruption measure causes sharp bunching among self-employed to increase by 0.60 to 0.83 standard deviations. This is consistent with a behavioral model that embeds social stigma.33 pagesen-USThis item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.Text