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Frederik Heitmüller

Frederik Heitmüller

F. Heitmüller is PhD candidate at Institute for Tax Law and Economics, Leiden Law School

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Tax law is a highly technical area of law, yet as in any other area of the law, tax rules are products of political and social processes. As political scientist in a law school, I use methods from the social sciences to better understand tax law-making and the effects of tax law on the economy. As member of the GLOBTAXGOV research project, I study in particular how standards developed by international organizations influence domestic tax law and practice in developing economies. I collect data by conducting interviews with experts and policymakers, and by analyzing policy documents and official statistics.

I am happy to discuss topics related to empirical research design, conducting expert and elite interviews and the use of official statistics. I am also open to any questions about whether and how to make use of programming languages (such as R) and how to make research reproducible.