2020. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 135; 4: 1849–1903. Paper. Appendix. Related links: Vox Dev, ICTD, Law360, World Bank.

This paper provides evidence from a fragile state that citizens demand more of a voice in the government when it tries to tax them. I examine a field experiment randomizing property tax collection…

with Balan P, Bergeron A, Tourek G. 2022. American Economic Review 112(3): 136. Paper. VoxDev.

We study a randomized policy experiment assigning neighborhoods of a Congolese city — spanning 45,162 properties — to tax collection by state agents or by city chiefs. Chief collection raised property tax compliance by 3.3 percentage points, increasing revenues by 43%.…

with Bergeron A, Tourek G. 2024. Econometrica 92(4): 1163-1193. Paper. JPAL Summary.

We study a policy experiment in the D.R. Congo that randomly assigned 38,028 property owners to the status quo tax rate or to a rate reduction. This variation in tax liabilities reveals that the status quo rate lies above the revenue-maximizing tax rate…

with Bergeron A, Bessone P, Kabeya JK, and Tourek G. Working Paper. VoxDev Summary. Conditionally accepted, American Economic Review.

This paper investigates whether a low-capacity state can raise more tax revenue through the optimal assignment of its tax collectors. We study the two-stage random assignment of property tax collectors (i) into teams, and (ii) to neighborhoods in a large Congolese city…

with Tourek G, Naritomi J, Laroche A, Bergeron A, and Ngoma M. Working Paper.

We study the introduction of progressive property taxation in a large Congolese city through a citywide field experiment conducted in partnership with the provincial government. Neighborhoods were randomly assigned to a progressive or a proportional schedule.

with Bergeron A, Ngindu EK, Tourek G. Working Paper. Winner of IIPF Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize 2023.

Delegating tax collection to informal leaders could raise revenue but runs the risk of undermining the local accountability of those leaders. We investigate this possibility by exploiting whether city chiefs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were randomly assigned to collect property taxes in 2018.

with Ahrenshop M, Bergeron A, Paler L, Tourek G, Weigel JL. Working Paper. While past scholarship finds that taxation catalyzes citizen participation, little is known about how the delegation of tax collection to local non-state actors—a common practice in developing countries—affects the fiscal contract between citizens and the state…

with Jensen A. 2026. Journal of Economic Literature. Working Paper. AEA highlight.

The empirical economics literature on taxation in developing countries has centered on the importance of third-party information for enforcement. This article reviews an emerging complementary literature focused on strengthening the “sinews” of state capacity: tax administration. We argue that reforms to the organizational structure, personnel management, and task management of tax authorities have potential to raise tax capacity in developing countries…

with Ngoma M, Sievert C, Jaravel X, Nunn N. 2025. Working Paper (coming soon).

We examine a field experiment involving 4,200 individuals across 300 Congolese villages that provided free motorcycle transportation to the largest urban market in the province one day per week for six months. Market access increased household income by 15% nine months after the intervention but eroded subjective wellbeing on average and made participants feel further away from their desired income…

with Bergeron A, Carvalho JP, Henrich J, and Nunn N. Working Paper. Conditionally accepted, Review of Economic Studies.

We study the evolution of belief systems that suppress productive effort. These include concerns about the envy of others, beliefs in the importance of luck for success, disdain for competitive effort, and traditional supernatural beliefs in witchcraft or the evil eye…

with Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, and James A. Robinson. 2017. Econometrica, 85, 4, Pp. 1065-1091. PDF. Appendix. Related links: Cato Institute.

We use variation in historical state centralization to examine the impact of institutions on cultural norms. The Kuba Kingdom, established in Central Africa in the early 17th century by King Shyaam, had more developed state institutions than the other independent villages and chieftaincies in the region. It had an unwritten constitution, separation of political powers, a judicial system with courts and juries, a police force and military, taxation, and significant public goods provision…

with Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, and James A. Robinson. 2015. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 105, 5, Pp. 1-8. PDF Appendix. VoxEU.

Despite the salience of ethnicity in African politics, recent experimental research finds little evidence of intrinsic coethnic bias. We develop a new measure of ethnic bias that is less sensitive to experimenter demand effects and other forms of measurement error. Specifically, we argue that a tablet-based implicit association test (IAT) mitigates measurement error concerns associated with studying interethnic preferences…

with L. van Dorp, et al. 2019. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(2):593-598. PDF. BBC Inside Science.

Few phenomena have had as profound or long-lasting consequences in human history as the emergence of large-scale centralized states in the place of smaller-scale and more-local societies. This study examines a fundamental, and yet, unexplored consequence of state formation: its genetic legacy…

with Lang, M. et al. 2019. Proceedings of the Royal Academy B286: 20190202. PDF.

Explaining the emergence of large-scale cooperation during the Holocene remains a central problem in the evolutionary literature. Among several contributing mechanisms, one hypothesis points to culturally evolved beliefs in punishing, interventionist gods that facilitate the extension of cooperative behavior toward geographically distant co-religionists who are unlikely to reciprocate…

with Gilbert Tshiebue Kapepula and Max Mbosho Konshi. Religion, Brain and Behavior, 12, 150–170. doi: 10.1080/2153599X.2021.2006289. Paper.

This paper explores an empirical puzzle: individuals in urban D.R. Congo who were unsure if they would be able to provide sufficient food for their families gave more of their money away to anonymous receivers in behavioral games. They were especially likely to share money evenly. We argue that this surprising prosocial behavior reflects sharing norms associated with informal insurance, for which more materially insecure individuals presumably have higher demand. We further argue that such sharing norms are sustained in urban Congo by Pentecostal churches…