The “underground economy” literature has generated a plethora of vague terms (shadow, hidden, subterranean) that have served to confuse rather than clarify the substantive issues raised by the finding that significant segments of economic activity may be imperfectly accounted for in the...

Florida's state government stands out for its responsible fiscal policy, for maintaining a balanced budget, and for keeping taxes, expenditures, and government employment relatively low. In an era of government growth, Florida's taxes and expenditures per capita and state government employment...

For the fifth and final year, we rank states according to their financial condition. On the basis of FY 2016 financial reports of the 50 states, this study ranks the states' fiscal solvency using 13 indicators that assess the extent to which the states can meet their obligations. State finances...

Islamic economics literature is rich in highlighting the welfare potential of Zakat, but very few empirical studies have undertaken the quantitative estimation of potential Zakat collection. In this study, we attempt to estimate potential Zakat collection at economy wide level to explore the...

Realignment in California comes at a time when the state's prison system is expensive and overcrowded; the response has been to re-evaluate and reconfigure the way counties use state prisons. This paper illustrates the way in which similar problems and solutions were present at the state's...

We study how payroll tax rate affects compliance in China's social security system, using natural within-city variations in statutory payroll tax rate over time for identification. Higher payroll tax rate reduces probability of participation in the social security system and ratio of taxable...

The development of this paper, we aim to evaluate the fiscal control activity carried out by tax authorities in Romania in terms of its effectiveness, namely the fight against tax evasion and of creating a tax environment based on cooperation between tax authorities and taxpayers, for better...

This paper analyzes the impact of confidentiality of taxpayer information on the level of compliance in two countries with very different levels of citizen trust in government – the United States and Italy. Using identical laboratory experiments conducted in the two countries, we analyze the...

The World Health Organisation recently recommended that governments should impose a tax on sugary drinks as a means of combating the obesity epidemic. This article examines the merits of this proposal and also suggests how, if such a tax were to be introduced, it might work. The article...