TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Fišar, Miloš
AU  - Reggiani, Tommaso G.
AU  - Sabatini, Fabio
AU  - Špalek, Jiří
        TI  - Media Bias and Tax Compliance: Experimental Evidence
        PY  - 2020/Jan/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 12938
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp12938
        AB  - We study the impact of media bias on tax compliance. Through a framed laboratory experiment, we assess how the exposure to biased news about government action affects compliance in a repeated taxation game. Subjects treated with positive news are significantly more compliant than the control group. The exposure to negative news, instead, does not prompt any significant reaction in respect to the neutral condition, suggesting that participants perceive the media negativity bias in the selection and tonality of news as the norm rather than the exception. Overall, our results suggest that biased news act as a constant source of psychological priming and play a vital role in taxpayers' compliance decisions.
        KW  - tax compliance
KW  - media bias
KW  - taxation game
KW  - laboratory experiment
        ER  -