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 countries. We find a high correlation betweennperceived tax evasion and tax morale. The results remain robust after exploitingnendogeneity and conducting several robustness tests. We also observe a strong positivencorrelation between institutional quality and tax morale.
Recently, the problems associated with the existing journal review processnaroused discussions from seasoned management researchers, who have also made useful suggestions for improving the process. To complement these suggestions, we propose a more radical change: a manuscript should be reviewed on an “as is”nbasis and its fate be determined in one round of review. The as-is review process shortens the time period from submission to final acceptance, reduces thenworkload of editors, referees and authors, provides frank author feedback to referees, and, most important, lets authors own all of the ideas in their publications.
Confidence intervals in econometric time series regressions suffer from notorious coveragenproblems. This is especially true when the dependence in the data is noticeable andnsample sizes are small to moderate, as is often the case in empirical studies. This papernsuggests using the studentized block bootstrap and discusses practical issues, such as thenchoice of the block size. A particular data-dependent method is proposed to automate the nmethod. As a side note, it is pointed out that symmetric confidence intervals are preferred over equal-tailed ones, since they exhibit improved coverage accuracy. The improvements in small sample performance are supported by a simulation study.
This article presents the results of a survey among the members of the „Verein f¨ur Socialpolitik“, the association of German speaking economists, containing questions on schools of thought, economic role models and policy issues. A probit analysis is used to identify to what extent ideological preferences or personal facts determine the respondent’s opinion. Some of the questions were already asked a quarter of a century ago so that it is possible to track the changes in view among economists. One of the most important findings is that neoclassical economics has become more strongly accepted.
It has often been pointed out in the literature that a symbiotic relationship exists between terrorist groups and the media. As yet, however, no formal model has been built based on this issue and only very little empirical research has been done in this field. The present contribution builds a simple game theoretic model, focussing on the strategic interactions between terrorists and the media. The model has features of a common-interest-game and results in multiple equilibria. After a discussion of the policy implications of the model, an empirical analysis is performed. Using newspaper coverage, terror incidents and terror fatalities data, it is shown that media attention and terrorism do mutually Granger cause each other, as predicted by the model. Moreover, it is explained why terror attacks tend to be “bloodier” in developing countries than in Europe and the United States.
Awards are non-material, extrinsic compensation taking the form of orders, medals, decorations and prizes. They have been widely used in monarchies and republics, private organizations, not-for-profit and profit-oriented firms. Nevertheless, they have so far not received much attention. This paper develops empirically testable hypotheses, analysing the determinants of the supply of awards. The hypotheses refer to the possibility of using awards, the effectiveness of awards, and the capacity to maintain the scarcity value of awards. As the number of awards bestowed cannot (at least so far) be measured adequately, empirical evidence is adduced by way of illustrative examples.
Since Durkheim, sociological explanations of social cooperation emphasize the internalization of values that induce norm compliance. Since Adam Smith, economic explanations of social cooperation emphasize incentives that induce selfish individuals to cooperate. Here we develop a general approach – the Beliefs, Preferences, and Constraints approach – showing that each of the above models is a special case. Our approach is based on
evidence indicating that pure Homo Sociologicus and pure Homo Economicus views are wrong. We show that self-regarding and norm-regarding actors coexist and that the available action opportunities determine which of these actor types dominates the aggregate level of social cooperation. Our approach contributes to the solution of long-standing problems, including the problems of social order and collective action, the determinants and consequences of social exchanges, the micro-foundations of emergent aggregate patterns of social interactions, and the measurement of the impact of cultural and economic practices on individuals’ social goals.
Combining the methods of neuroscience and economics generates powerful tools for studying the brain processes behind human social interaction. We argue that hedonic interpretations of theories of social preferences provide a useful framework that generates interesting predictions and helps interpret brain activations involved in altruistic, fair and trusting behaviors. These behaviours are consistently associated with activation in reward-related brain areas such as the striatum and with prefrontal
activity implicated in cognitive control, the processing of emotions, and integration of benefits and costs, consistent with resolution of a conflict between self-interest and
other-regarding motives.
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 the cost reductions with postal voting increase turnout. The empirical analysis is based on a newly collected data set on the introduction of postal voting in Swiss cantons. We take advantage of the unique fact that voting by mail was introduced at different times across cantons. This allows identifying the impact of postal voting on turnout, independent of time, issue and canton specific effects. The estimated average effect on turnout is roughly 4.1 percentage points for an average turnout of 43 percent between 1970 and 2005.
Today’s international organizations are characterized by a fundamental deficit in democracy. We therefore propose institutional measures to increase the direct participation possibilities of the citizens in international organizations. In order to reduce the number of citizens involved in decision-making to a manageable size, a representative sample of trustees is selected using a random mechanism. The trustees are given the right to launch initiatives and to vote in referendums on issues related to an international organization’s constitution. They can also recall executives when they are dissatisfied with their behavior. No specific changes to the organization of these entities, especially their executive function, are proposed. Rather, the executives of international organizations must obey the constitutional changes adopted by the trustees. The proposal gives international organizations democratic legitimacy. Moreover, the executives are subjected to the control of the citizens of the member states, which induces better responsiveness to the preferences of the people, as well as higher organizational efficiency.
