Understanding cross-cultural differences in peer reporting practices: evidence from tax evasion games in Moldova and France
通过比较摩尔多瓦和法国参与者在逃税博弈中的行为，发现摩尔多瓦人因苏联时期告密历史而更少举报他人，但两国逃税率相似，表明举报行为与文化背景相关但不直接影响合规。
Authorities rely on reports from private citizens to detect and enforce more than a trivial portion of effective law-breaking. The present article is the first to study the cultural aspect of peer reporting experimentally. By collecting data in a post-Soviet country (Moldova), we focus in particular on how the Soviet legacy of using citizens as private informants may have a long-lasting effect on their willingness to cooperate with state authorities. We then contrast those effects with peer reporting behavior in France, a Western society. Our results suggest that participants in Moldova view cooperation with authorities as less socially acceptable than their counterparts in France. Our results also suggest that participants in Moldova engage less frequently in peer reporting than individuals in France. However, we also find that less peer reporting does not necessarily imply less tax compliance. Participants in both countries exhibit very similar tax compliance rates. We explain the effect of peer reporting on tax compliance in Moldova using the country's past experience during the Soviet era, when being reported to authorities was common and carried grave consequences.