Essays on imperfect information and individual choice

This dissertation is organized in three separate chapters. A common thread intertwined in the three of them is the role of informational flows at influencing individual´s choice. Chapter 1 provides novel empirical evidence on the role of imperfect information about price schedules on determining consumer’s demand choice for the residential gas market using a natural experiment and consumer microdata from the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Based on the results a large field experiment carried out in a municipality of Argentina, Chapter 2 presents new empirical results showing that taxpayers are relatively insensitive to information on the prevailing level of tax evasion and the supply and quality of local public goods, whereas raising the salience of fines and other related penalties may have a large bearing on tax compliance. Relatedly, Chapter 3 presents novel evidence, also based on a field experiment conducted in another Argentine municipality, suggesting that informational treatments influence taxpayers’ beliefs about the risk of detection and the salience of penalties in the case of non-compliance, and hence, their compliance behaviour with respect to the tax code.