This paper incorporates tax morale into the Allingham Sandmo (1972) model of income tax evasion. Tax morale is interpreted as a social norm for tax compliance. The norm strength, depending on the share of evaders in the society, is endogenously derived. Taxpayers act conditionally cooperative, as their evasion decision depends on the other agents’ compliance. We characterize an equilibrium whic...

Employment, Hours of Work and the Optimal Taxation of Low Income Families The optimal design of low income support is examined using a structural labour supply model. The approach incorporates unobserved heterogeneity, fixed costs of work, childcare costs and the detailed non-convexities of the tax and transfer system. The analysis considers purely Pareto improving reforms and also optimal desi...

This paper analyzes a Tiebout / tax-competition model, where heterogeneity of consumer preferences is introduced into a standard tax-competition framework. Following the modern Tiebout tradition, consumer sorting in the model is achieved through the activities of profit-maximizing community developers. Once sorting is achieved, the equilibrium is equivalent to that in a standard tax-competition...

Recent studies on the so-called double dividend hypothesis find that environmental tax swaps exacerbate the costs of the tax system and therefore do not produce a double dividend. We extend these models by incorporating a fixed-factor in the production of the polluting good and, therefore, allowing Ricardian rents to be generated in the economy. In this setting, an environmental tax reform with...

In this paper we model taxpayer participation in an unanticipated tax amnesty which can be entered by paying a fixed amount. Taxpayers are characterized by a Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) utility function and differ in relative risk aversion coefficient and in income. With minor changes the same model also describes a FATOTA (Fixed Amount of Taxes or Tax Audit) system. Our results show...

There are surprisingly few estimates of the effects of sales taxes on retail prices, especially at the firm level. We consider the temporary suspension, and subsequent reinstatement, of the gasoline sales tax in Illinois and Indiana following a price spike in 2000. Earlier laws set the timing of the reinstatements, providing plausibly exogenous changes in the tax rates. Using a unique dataset o...

This paper examines a firm’s investment intensity and timing decisions using a real options approach. The firm is endowed with a perpetual option to invest in a project at any time by incurring an irreversible investment cost at that instant. The amount of the irreversible investment cost determines the intensity of investment with decreasing returns to scale. The project generates a stream of ...

This paper studies the impact of tax-financed universal health coverage schemes on macroeconomic aspects of labor supply, asset holding, inequality, and welfare, while taking into account features common to developing economies, such as informal employment and tax avoidance, by constructing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents. Agents have different education...

Alfred Schütz’s 1927 essay on capital income taxation is examined in the contexts of the evolution of the German progressive income tax, the fiscal and monetary crises of the time, and Schütz’s relationship to the Austrian school of economics. JEL classification: B3.

Marshallian consumer surplus (MCS) is generally an inaccurate measure of welfare change because it neglects income effects. Suppose these effects overturn the usual demand response to a price change. Then, the deadweight loss from a distortionary tax or subsidy has the wrong sign, that is, there is a spurious deadweight gain. JEL Classification: D11, D6.