Using a survey-based experiment, this paper examines how tax authorities’ attributes of trust and power, when featured in the media, impact intended tax compliance. We apply excerpts from newspaper coverage on tax issues to manipulate the trustworthiness and power of tax authorities in Austria...

Risk-defusing operators (RDO) are actions that reduce risk, to be enacted either before a negative event occurs (pre-event RDOs) or afterwards (post-event RDOs). For post-event RDOs, detection probability of the negative events is relevant. Regulatory focus theory suggests that...

The present study examines whether the unemployed differ from occupational categories, with regard to the perceived status of their category, identification with their category and the occurrence of in-group favouritism. According to social identity theory, members of low-status groups with...

This study investigates experts’ and laypeople's social representations of the financial and economic crisis, as widely discussed in the media after the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Financial experts (n=156) and laypeople (n=153) with low versus high confidence in the economic recovery...

Tax compliance in a between-subjects experiment was higher when the uncertainty about the occurrence of an audit was not resolved until three weeks after participants had filed their tax returns than in a control treatment with immediate uncertainty resolution. Results have important...

Paying taxes can be considered a contribution to the welfare of a society. But even though tax payments are redistributed to citizens in the form of public goods and services, taxpayers often do not perceive many benefits from paying taxes. Information campaigns about the use of taxes for...

If the government's goal is to raise tax revenue in a cost-effective manner, which (if any) occupation categories could be targeted with a higher probability of an audit to yield increased revenue? Looking beyond mere opportunity to evade (e.g., self-employment) and starting from the premise...

Economic decisions in private households involve two aspects: what to buy and how to finance it. Models of spending and financing are presented, and determinants of credit decisions in the private household are discussed. It is proposed that both situational characteristics (e.g., gender roles,...