Previous research argues that law expresses social values and could, therefore, influence individual behavior independently of enforcement and penalization. Using three laboratory experiments on tax avoidance and evasion, we study how legality affects individuals' decisions. We find that,...

In a real-effort laboratory experiment to manipulate evasion opportunities, we study whether the moral evaluation of tax evasion is subject to a self-serving bias. We find that tax morale is egoistically biased: Subjects with the opportunity to evade taxes judge tax evasion as less unethical as...

In this paper we employ a tax-competition model to demonstrate that in the presence of migration the re-distributive advantage of a non-linear income tax system over a linear (flat) one is significantly mitigated relative to the autarky (no-migration) equilibrium. When migration threats are...

In this paper we extend the zero tax at the top result obtained in the closed economy case with bounded skill distributions for the case of unbounded skill distributions in the presence of international labor mobility and tax competition. We show that in the equilibrium for the tax competition...

This paper analyzes optimal linear commodity taxes joint with non-linear income taxes. We provide optimal tax rules based on empirically observable elasticities. We demonstrate that commodities should be taxed/subsidized if doing so boosts labor supply. The critical role of commodity taxation is...

Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say's law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic effect...

Theoretical discussion on compensating mechanisms involving the Pareto criterion that address inequality rather than absolute welfare is non-existent in trade literature. In a simple HOS model we consider tax-transfer policies that keep the pre-trade degree of inequality unchanged between...

We consider an economy characterised by involuntary unemployment among low skilled workers, and investigate the implications for employment and income of welfare schemes often advocated as less distortionary. We show that reducing unemployment benefits in favour of income subsidies (social...

In this paper we introduce an analytical framework for analyzing the effect of permanent income tax reductions on emigration and conduct an empirical analysis of their impact, based on the Israeli tax reductions during 2004-2010. We find that permanent tax reductions reduce the emigration flows...

This paper analyzes the impact of aging on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging, i.e. declining...