Paulo Antonacci

I’m a joint Ph.D. candidate in Economics and Public Policy at Duke University. My work sits at the intersection of public economics and development. With a with a focus on building data-driven policies that improve governance.

My job market paper — Who Should the Taxman Visit? Evidence from Door-to-Door Tax Enforcement in Indonesia — uses causal forests to identify which taxpayers respond most to in-person enforcement, making the trade-offs between participation-maximizing and revenue-maximizing strategies explicit. In a nutshell:

1. Prioritizing participation increases both the number of payers and total revenue but is highly regressive;
2. Prioritizing revenue yields large fiscal gains with no change in participation;
3. Standard risk-based strategies (targeting likely delinquents) deliver no improvements in either outcome.

You can find the latest version here: Job Market Paper (PDF)

I also study: (1) low-cost digital nudges for tax compliance (2) political cycles and deflorestation in Brazil, (3) implications of the old-age security hypothesis under pension reform in Brazil, and (4) the evaluation of a tax-rebate policy in Pakistan.

If you’re interested in collaboration, feel free to reach me at paulo.antonacci@duke.edu.