A series of experiments in Albania and the Netherlands give us the opportunity to compare behavioral patterns related to tax evasion. Subjects have to decide between a random 'registered' income, the realization of which will be known to the experimenter for sure, and a random 'unregistered'...

This study provides the first set of estimates of the returns to schooling over an extended period in Russia and Ukraine (1985-2002). There has been an increase in returns to schooling in both countries but the increase is much bigger in Russia than in Ukraine. The intriguing question is why...

This paper presents an evaluation of the tax-transfer treatment of married couples in 15 EU countries using the EUROMOD microsimulation model. First, we show that many tax-transfer schemes in Europe feature negative jointness defined as a situation where the tax rate on one person depends...

Should two-band income taxes be progressive given a general income distribution? We provide a negative answer under utilitarian and max-min welfare functions. While this result clarifies some ambiguities in the literature, it does not rule out progressive taxes in general. If we maximize total...

The public finance literature demonstrates the equivalence between consumption and laborincome (wage) taxes. We introduce an experimental paradigm in which individuals make real labor-leisure choices and spend their earned income on real goods. We use this paradigm to test whether a labor-income...

We estimate the responses of gross labor earnings with respect to marginal and average net-of-tax rates in France over the period 2003-2006. We exploit a series of reforms to the income-tax and the payroll-tax schedules that affect individuals who earn less than twice the minimum wage. Our...