In this paper the main focus lies on the shadow economy and on work in the shadow. The most influential factors on the shadow economy are tax policies and state regulation. The size of the shadow economy was decreasing over 1999 to 2007 from 34.0% to 31.2% for 161 countries (unweighted average)....

Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between rules and inflation is relatively weak. In this paper, we first discuss likely causes for this weak link and present the argument that monetary commitment...

Yearly revenues from transnational criminal activity account for USD 1 to 1.6 trillion, and a wide variety of methods is employed to transfer those revenues across borders and launder it. The specific type of crime largely determines the choice of methods. Terrorists, for example, use both...

International policy standards in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing are set forth by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations on Anti-money laundering (AML)/Combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) policies. While those standards are very high and...

This paper presents a consistent structural equation (SEM) estimate of the size and development of the shadow economy and of do-it-yourself (DIY) activities in Germany from 1970 to 2005. By 2005, they reached a level of about 17% and 5% of official GDP. While the shadow economy has regularly...

In this note we model the individual decision on income underreporting in a system with a negative income tax. We show that a change in the tax rate has opposing effects on the compliance behavior of the poor and the rich.

The main objective of this paper is to empirically investigate the socio-economic causes of terrorism and political violence in a sample of 12 countries in Western Europe. First, we show that in western European countries the classical economic argument of opportunity cost is confirmed. That is,...

In this paper the main focus lies on 'driving forces' of the development and size of the shadow economy in highly developed 39 OECD countries. The influential factors on the shadow economy are tax policies and state regulation, which, if they rise, increase the shadow economy, but also other...

We interpret the emergence of Jihadist terrorism in the light of contest theory. Al Qaeda may be portrayed as a contest organizer, providing a ‘prize’ to the best terrorist group. Each group maximizes its probability of winning by launching attacks more destructive than previous ones...