infonet-economy

Many countries are forging ahead with convenient balloting methods, in particular electronic and postal voting, in order to re-engage voters. In this paper, we test whether thencost reductions with postal voting increase turnout. The empirical analysis is based on annewly collected data set on the introduction of postal voting in Swiss cantons. We take advantage of the unique fact…

This paper examines the causes and effects of mobile number portability (MNP) and provides a survey of its implementation in Europe. It first examines the competitive effects and costs of introducing MNP. Next, it discusses how to charge for MNP. It argues that a price cap regime starting from the average cost of porting is likely to provide appropriate incentives. Finally, it…

“Evaluitis” - i.e. ex post assessments of organizations and persons - has become a rapidly spreading disease. In addition to the well-known costs imposed on evaluees and evaluators, additional significant costs are commonly disregarded: incentives are distorted, ossification is induced and the decision approach is wrongly conceived. As a result, evaluations are used too often and too…

In the television show Affari Tuoi an individual faces a sequence of binary choicesnbetween a risky lottery with equiprobable prizes of up to half a million euros and anmonetary amount for certain. The decisions of 114 show participants are used to test the predictions of ten decision theories: risk neutrality, expected utility theory, fanning-out hypothesis (weighted utility theory…

Engelmann and Strobel (AER 2004) question the relevance of inequity aversionnin simple dictator game experiments claiming that a combination of a preference fornefficiency and a Rawlsian motive for helping the least well-off is more important thanninequity aversion. We show that these results are partly based on a strong subject poolneffect. The participants of the E&S…

Informal evidence suggests that individuals are willing to pay only a finite and, typically, very low price for a specific lottery that converges to an infinite payment with probability one. The established decision theories (expected value, expected utility theory, cumulative prospect theory) cannot satisfactorily explain this low willingness to pay. The presented paradox…

Increasing evidence from the empirical economic and psychological literature suggests that positive and negative well-being are more than opposite ends of the same phenomenon. Two separate measures of the dependent variable may be needed when analyzing the determinants of subjective well-being. We argue that this conclusion reflects in part the use of too restrictive econometric…

In this paper, we develop the concept of a psychological tax contract that goes beyond thentraditional deterrence model and explains tax morale as a complicated interaction betweenntaxpayers and the government. Based on crowding theory, the impact of deterrence and rewardsnon tax morale is discussed. As a contractual relationship implies duties and rights for each contract partner,…

Why so many people pay their taxes, although fines and audit probability are low, has become a central question in the tax compliance literature. A homo economicus, with a more refined motivation structure, helps us to shed light on this puzzle. This paper provides empirical evidence for the relevance of conditional cooperation, using survey data from 30 West and East European…