This paper presents, to our knowledge, the first empirical investigation if tax evasion might be desirable for an optimal income tax schedule. More specifically: Does the opportunity to evade taxes eventually even increase tax revenues? Resuscitating the intriguing conclusions by the theoretical...

Although theoretical research on optimal capital taxation suggest to incorporate public opinions, the empirical literature on preferences regarding capital taxation almost exclusively focusses on the emotionally loaded estate tax. This paper presents a more comprehensive investigation of...

Empirical literature on preferences for wealth taxation almost exclusively focuses on either the emotionally loaded estate tax or rather general concepts of redistributive preferences. Yet, it remains unclear whether the exceptional opposition towards the estate tax is applicable to other...

The individual capacity to form personal preferences constitutes an essential element of the democratic process. At the same time, policies with far-reaching consequences often require profound expertise. Taxation is such an example. Due to its complex character, bounded rationality might induce...

In this paper we use an experiment to compare a theory of risk aversion and a theory of spite as an explanation for overbidding in auctions. As a workhorse we use the second-price all-pay and the first-price winner-pay auction. Both risk and spite can be used to rationalize deviations from risk...

Who benefits from the ignorance of others? We address this question from the point of view of a policy maker who can induce some ignorance into a system of agents competing for resources. Evolutionary game theory shows that when unconditional cooperators or ignorant agents compete with defectors...

We investigate power abuse of a single punisher in a public-goods-game subject to variations in punishment power and contribution transparency. We find a high amount of abuse across all conditions. More power led to more abuse over time, while transparency could only curb abuse in the high power...