Using the currency demand and DYMIMIC approaches estimates are presented about the size of the shadow economy in 22 Transition and 21 OECD countries. Over 2001/2002 in 21 OECD countries is the average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) 16.7% of "official" GDP and of 22...

This paper summarises the key findings of a recent study on the impact of Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (EU) on labour markets in the current Member States. The study focuses on three main channels, along which enlargement may affect labour markets in the EU, namely i) trade, ii)...

In 1994 a limit on the growth of property values for tax purposes was imposed in Michigan. One consequence of the newly imposed assessment growth cap was an emerging differential in tax prices between potential new property owners and long-time property owners. The purpose of this paper is to...

This paper estimates the impact of registering for taxes on firm profits in Bolivia, the country with the highest levels of informality in Latin America. A new survey of micro and small firms enables us to control for a rich set of measures of owner ability and business motivations that can...

We study a field experiment on tax compliance in Slovenia. Small accounting companies were randomly assigned to an untreated control group and two treatment groups. Companies in the first treatment group received a letter that highlighted the importance of paying taxes and informed about the...

Land transfer taxes are a substantial portion of the cost of moving house in many developed countries. Since stamp duties are endogenous with respect to the house price, we create an instrumental variable that is the stamp duty on a property, given that postcode's starting house price and the...

The elasticity of taxable income (ETI) is often interpreted as a sufficient statistic to assess the welfare costs of taxation. Building on the conceptual framework of Chetty (2009), we show that this assertion does no longer hold for tax systems with deduction possibilities if (i) deductions...

We study the effects of patriotism on tax compliance. In particular, we assume that individuals feel a (random draw of) warm glow from honestly paying their taxes. A higher expected warm glow reduces the government's optimal audit probability and yields higher tax compliance. Second, individuals...

Imputed rental income of homeowners is tax exempt in most countries, despite the long-standing arguments recommending its inclusion in the tax base, on both equity and efficiency grounds. The current fiscal crisis revived interest towards this form of taxation. The paper investigates the fiscal...

The tax base for state unemployment insurance (UI) programs varies significantly in the U.S., from a low of $7,000 annually in California to a high of $52,700 in Washington. Previous research has provided surprisingly little guidance to policy makers regarding the tradeoffs associated with this...