We study what determines taxpayers' deduction behavior when filing tax returns. Preliminary deficits might be viewed as losses assuming zero preliminary balance as reference point. Swedish taxpayers may escape these losses by claiming deductions after receiving information about the preliminary...

The objective of this paper is to study if taxpayers behave in a loss averse manner when filing their tax returns. This is important for tax design but also for understanding human behavior in general. The predictions of prospect theory can be contrasted to those of expected utility theory. We...

The New Deal For Young People is the major welfare-to-work program in the UK. It is a mandatory multistage policy targeted at the 18-24 year old unemployed. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the program in terms of enhancing the (re)employment probability of participant males. I...

Firm informality is pervasive throughout the developing world, and Bangladesh is no exception. The informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax basis and therefore affects the provision of public goods. The literature on encouraging formalization has focused predominantly on...

This paper examines the effect of cash versus in-kind transfers on local prices. Both types of transfers increase the demand for normal goods; in-kind transfers also increase supply in recipient communities, which should cause prices to fall relative to cash transfers. We test and confirm this...

Using a large administrative data set from Chile, we find that, on average, boys perform better than girls in mathematics. In this paper, we document several features of their relative performance. First, we note that the gender gap appears to increase with age (it doubles between fourth grade...

This paper sheds new light on the interactions between business cycles and the consumption distribution. We use Consumer Expenditure Survey data and a factor model to characterize the cyclical dynamics of the consumption distribution. We first establish that our approach is able to closely match...

Firms in developing countries often avoid paying taxes by making informal payments to tax officials. These bribes may raise the cost of operating a business, and the price charged to consumers. To decrease these costs, we designed a feedback incentive scheme for business tax inspectors that...

The enlargement of the European Union has increased concerns about the role of generous welfare transfers in attracting migrants. This paper explores the issue of welfare migration across the 15 countries of the pre-enlargement Union and finds a significant but small effect of the generosity of...

In this paper we investigate whether peers' behavior influences the choice of college major. Using a unique dataset of students at Bocconi University and exploiting the organization of teaching at this institution, we are able to identify the endogenous effect of peers on such decision through a...