Will the I.R.S. Learn to Nudge?

A new paper by William Congdon, Jeffrey Kling, and Sendhil Mullainathan provides an excellent summary of the implications of recent behavioral economics research for tax policy. The authors consider how behavioral economics “changes our understanding of the welfare consequences of taxation, the relative desirability of using the tax system as a platform for policy implementation, and the role of taxes as an element of policy design.” [%comments]