This paper compares the poverty reduction impact of income sources, taxes and transfers across five OECD countries. Since the estimation of that impact can depend on the order in which the various income sources are introduced into the analysis, it is done by using the Shapley value. Estimates...

The analysis of economic loss attributed to the shadow economy has attracted much attention in recent years by both academics and policy makers. Often, multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) models are applied to time series data estimating the size and development of the shadow economy for...

Government-run entities are often more labor-intensive than private companies, even with identical production technologies. This need not imply slack in the public sector, but may be a rational response to its wage tax advantage over private firms. A tax-favored treatment of public production...

This paper analyzes the influence of the shadow economy on corruption and vice versa. We hypothesize that corruption and shadow economy are substitutes in high income countries while they are complements in low income countries. The hypotheses are tested for a cross-section of 120 countries and...

In this paper we use a panel of 189 countries to describe the salient trends that have emerged in national personal income tax systems spanning the twenty five year period from 1981 to 2005. Using complete national income tax schedules, we calculate actual average and marginal tax rates at...

"Estimations of the size and development of the shadow economy for 145 countries, including developing, transition and highly developed OECD economies over the period 1999 to 2003 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2002/03 in 96 developing...

By using official time series of the Italian evaded VAT base (Ministry of Finance) for the period 1980-2004 we investigate empirically the long-run characteristics of tax evasion and the relationship with the tax burden. We focus on three important issues not analyzed so far. First, using...

Promotions and cross-firm mobility provide substantial gains in earnings - a well established finding based on gross income data. Yet, what matters for incentives is how much an individual can consume or save after taxation. We show that net and gross income growth patterns may differ...

This paper is the first to provide evidence of efficient taxation of groups with heterogeneous levels of 'tax morale'. We set up an optimal income tax model where high tax morale implies a high subjective cost of evading taxes. The model predicts that 'nice guys finish last': groups with higher...