voluntary disclosure of evaded taxes increasing revenue or increasing incentives to evade many countries apply lower fines to tax evading individuals when they voluntarily disclose the tax evasion they committed i model such voluntary disclosure mechanisms theoretically and show that while such mechanisms increase the incentive to evade taxes they nevertheless increase tax revenues net of administrative costs i confirm the importance of administrative costs in a survey of german competent local tax authorities i then test the effects of voluntary disclosure on the tax evasion decision using the introduction of the 2009 offshore voluntary disclosure program in the u s for identification the analysis confirms that the introduction of voluntary disclosure increases tax evasion

taxation and international migration of superstars evidence from the european football market we analyze the effects of top tax rates on international migration of football players in 14 european countries since 1985 both country case studies and multinomial regressions show evidence of strong mobility responses to tax rates with an elasticity of the number of foreign domestic players to the net of tax rate around one around 0 15 we also find evidence of sorting effects low taxes attract highability players who displace low ability players and displacement effects low taxes on foreigners displace domestic players those results can be rationalized in a simple model of migration and taxation with rigid labor demand jel f22 h24 h31 j44 j61 l83

fiscal paradise foreign tax havens and american business the tax haven affiliates of american corporations account for more than 20 percent of u s foreign direct investment and nearly a third of the foreign profits of u s firms american companies report extraordinarily high profit rates on their tax haven investments in 1982 this behavior implies that the revenue maximizing tax rate for a typical haven is around 5 8 percent american and foreign investment in tax havens has an uncertain effect on u s tax revenue but since low tax rates encourage american companies to shift profits out of high tax foreign countries it is possible that low foreign tax rates ultimately enhance u s tax collections

modeling the effects of adjustment programs on income distribution abstract this paper introduces the general structure of the micro macro economywide simulation model maquette used in several case studies on the impact of adjustment policies on the distribution of income the description of the maquette emphasizes how the short and medium run effects of adjustment packages are incorporated in a general equilibrium model and explains the common structure and variants in the specification and estimation of relationships in product factor financial and foreign exchange markets simulations are used to illustrate the role of differences in assumptions about market adjustment mechanisms e g fix price or flex price closed or open financial system on the effects of adjustment policies on the distribution of income adjustment to an external shock through devaluation or through fiscal retrenchment is then contrasted for an economy with different degrees of financial and foreign trade openness the simulations show that assumptions about macroeconomic closures and behavioral parameters matter a great deal in determining the productive and distributive effects of a shock and a country s adjustment to that shock

an economic analysis of tax amnesties abstract tax amnesties have frequently been justified as politically popular ways to generate increases in government revenue this paper examines the circumstances under which amnesties are likely to have a beneficial impact on revenue collections it concludes that while in general it may be correct to impose a reduced penalty on individuals who voluntarily disclose tax evasion shortlived amnesties of the type most frequently observed in practice are unlikely to generate genuinely additional revenue particularly when judged against the potential danger of reducing future tax compliance

bank ownership and performance does politics matter this paper uses a new dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance providing separate estimations for developing and industrial countries it finds that state owned banks located in developing countries tend to have lower profitability and higher costs than their private counterparts and that the opposite is true for foreign owned banks the paper finds no strong correlation between ownership and performance for banks located in industrial countries next in order to test whether the differential in performance between public and private banks is driven by political considerations the paper checks whether this differential widens during election years it finds strong support for this hypothesis

growth equity and the environment in chile issues and evidence abstract chile has grown at an annual rate of 7 over the past decade income distribution however deteriorated for the poor and middle class before the economy reached full capacity when real wages began to rise and unemployment to fall growth has been export led putting pressure on stocks of native forests and fishery and mining resources environmental quality worsened before 1990 reversing these trends would require extra investments on the order of 1 of gdp over many years

optimal taxation in the presence of tax evasion expected utility versus prospect theory abstract it is now well known that the predictions of expected utility theory eut applied to tax evasion are quantitatively and qualitatively at variance with the evidence while prospect theory pt makes the correct predictions in this literature the tax rate is exogenous we endogenize the tax rate and require that a successful theory should explain jointly the facts on the tax rate tax gap and the level of government expenditure we find that the data is best described by taxpayers using pt and the government using standard utility theory eut the results are robust to several possible alternative specifications we discuss how our results have a bearing on the debate between liberalism versus paternalism in behavioral economics we also propose an alternative explanation based on the notion of context dependent preferences

the missing wealth of nations are europe and the u s net debtors or net creditors this paper shows that official statistics substantially underestimate the net foreign asset positions of rich countries because they fail to capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens drawing on systematic anomalies in portfolio investment positions and a unique swiss dataset i find that 8 of the global financial wealth of households is held in tax havens 6 of which goes unrecorded on the basis of plausible assumptions accounting for unrecorded assets turns the eurozone officially the world s second largest net debtor into a net creditor it also reduces the u s net debt significantly the results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor to rich capital flows external assets are now in poor countries and debts in rich countries i provide concrete proposals to improve international investment statistics

adjustment and social costs in chile during the 1980s abstract traditional analysis of adjustment programs tends to underestimate the welfare costs because it assumes that a contraction of nontradable production will close the expenditure income gap while the resulting excess supply of tradables will automatically be exported in chile however tradable output contracted sharply falling almost two thirds as much as nontradable output the conventional analysis also ignores the effect of adjustment on unemployment rates and on real wages this paper argues that the adjustment measures of the 1980s were regressive even though the government was successful in targeting its expenditures toward the very poor during the period of fiscal retrenchment among the regressive adjustment measures were the subsidies to holders of dollar denominated debt provided by the central bank in addition policies to reduce expenditures raised the unemployment rate over 26 reduced real wages by 20 for almost five years and reduced health housing and education budgets by 20 per capita finally the required real devaluation raised the cost of living for the poor

the incidence of transaction taxes evidence from a stamp duty holiday this paper exploits the 2008 09 stamp duty holiday in the united kingdom to estimate the incidence of a transaction tax on housing the average reduction in the after tax sale price is found to be around 900 against the backdrop of an average tax reduction of about 1500 while we estimate an increase in transactions of properties affected by the tax holiday around 8 most of this effect appears to have reversed rapidly after the policy was withdrawn suggesting mostly a short term retiming of transactions the findings are calibrated to a simple bargaining model to show they imply that about sixty percent of the surplus generated by the holiday accrued to buyers

a hierarchical model of the determinants of non performing assets in banks an ism and micmac approach the banking systems of emerging economies in general and india in particular are facing sustained impairment due to mounting non performing assets npas in the absence of stringent policies and t

banking deregulation and allocative efficiency in pakistan abstractthis article examines the impact of deregulation policies on allocative efficiency of banks in pakistan it investigates whether deregulation has impacted the pattern of allocative efficiency of banks and explores which bank ownership segment has been more responsive it uses data from 1991 to 2005 and explicitly models allocative inefficiency by using the translog shadow cost share system empirical results show that overregulation and imperfect market structure hampers the ability of banks to make competitive decisions we find evidence of allocative inefficiency leading to over utilization of labour and deposits vis a vis operating cost empirical results for time varying allocative efficiency show declining levels of allocative inefficiency for state owned and private banks in post reform period deregulation policies induce state owned banks to decrease over utilization of labour relative to deposits and operating cost while private banks succeed in using operating cost closer to optimal leve

manufacturing output employment and real wages in the 1980s labour s loss until the century s end during the 1980s most developing countries experienced sharp declines in manufacturing output and real wages whilst their manufacturing sectors were supposedly restructured or made more competitive by having to confront market forces this article examines the extent to which macroeconomic adjustment and industrial restructuring policies succeeded in achieving their objectives

the occurrence of tax amnesties theory and evidence this paper presents a theoretical model and empirical evidence to explain the occurrence of tax amnesties we treat amnesties as endogenous resulting from a strategic game between many taxpayers discounting future payments from punishment and a government that balances costs and benefits of amnesty programs from the model we derive hypotheses about the factors that should influence the occurrence of tax amnesties to test these predictions empirically we rely on amnesty information from us states between 1981 and 2011 in line with the theoretical model our empirical findings suggest that the likelihood of amnesties is mainly driven by a government s fiscal requirements and the taxpayers expectations on future amnesties

the effects of shared atm networks on the efficiency of turkish banks this study investigates whether forming shared atm networks has yielded positive benefits for banks in turkey by increasing their productive efficiency using a data envelopment analysis dea approach pure technical and scale efficiency scores of turkish banks are estimated and analysed for the period 2000 2003 the results suggest that although it is possible to realize positive effects through atm sharing arrangements there are multiple factors that determine which banks realize such benefits the geographical distribution of shared atms between urban and rural markets and the level of competition between banks within urban areas are shown to be important determinants of differences in bank efficiency this discrepancy between the gains associated with atm sharing may have important implications concerning the adoption and sharing of new technology by banks in developing countries

the postsocialist transitions in comparative perspective policy issues and recent experience abstract this paper examines the postsocialist transition in eastern europe the reforms in china and the postdirigiste transitions in latin america the paper analyzes the initial conditions that gave rise to processes of reform in the different countries the main strategies for economic reform shock treatment gradualism and mixed strategies discussing their conditioning factors and rationale the actual record of these policies in terms of key indicators of economic performance such as inflation gdp growth external sector sustainability progress in privatization and the social costs of adjustment in addition the paper discusses interdependencies between economic and political reforms during the course of systemic transformation

basel iii and perceived resilience of banks in the brics economies abstractthis study investigates how the additional capital and liquidity requirements of basel iii would increase the resilience of banks in particular using panel data from 2007 to 2014 we examine the resilience of banks in the brics economies our results suggest that a 10 increase in capital adequacy ratio car tier 1 capital ratio tra and leverage ratio lev the resilience as measured by z score of banks increases by about 2 18 0 89 and 1 31 respectively similarly for a 100 increase in liquidity coverage ratio lcr the resilience of banks increases by 0 51 1 10 and 1 19 respectively in the models associated with car tra and lev hence our findings suggest that the car is robust to increase the resilience of banks our study also reveals that the lcr and lev are the most effective to increase the resilience of banks if implemented simultaneously we also find that the stage of economic development does not matter in formulating policies for the brics economies and finally

financial liberalization and bank efficiency a comparative analysis of india and pakistan this paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in india and pakistan during 1988 1998 a period characterized by far reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization data envelopment analysis is applied to two alternative input output specifications to measure technical efficiency and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency the consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non frontier measures of bank performance in addition the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined it is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years especially after 1995 unlike public sector banks in india public sector banks in pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only it is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income this is attributed to the presence of high non performing loans in addition it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years

unwilling or unable to cheat evidence from a tax audit experiment in denmark this paper analyzes a tax enforcement field experiment in denmark in the base year a stratified and representative sample of over 40 000 individual income tax filers was selected for the experiment half of the tax filers were randomly selected to be thoroughly audited while the rest were deliberately not audited the following year threat of audit letters were randomly assigned and sent to tax filers in both groups we present three main empirical findings first using baseline audit data we find that the tax evasion rate is close to zero for income subject to third party reporting but substantial for self reported income since most income is subject to third party reporting the overall evasion rate is modest second using quasi experimental variation created by large kinks in the income tax schedule we find that marginal tax rates have a positive impact on tax evasion for self reported income but that this effect is small in comparison to legal avoidance and behavioral responses third using the randomization of enforcement we find that prior audits and threat of audit letters have significant effects on self reported income but no effect on third party reported income all these empirical results can be explained by extending the standard model of rational tax evasion to allow for the key distinction between self reported and third party reported income

the impact of liberalization on the productive efficiency of indian commercial banks abstract we examine the productive efficiency of 70 indian commercial banks during the early stages 1986 1991 of the ongoing period of liberalization we use data envelopment analysis to calculate radial technical efficiency scores we then use stochastic frontier analysis to attribute variation in the calculated efficiency scores to three sources a temporal component an ownership component and a random noise component we find publicly owned indian banks to have been the most efficient followed by foreign owned banks and privately owned indian banks we also find a temporal improvement in the performance of foreign owned banks virtually no trend in the performance of privately owned indian banks and a temporal decline in the performance of publicly owned indian banks we attempt to explain these patterns in terms of the government s evolving regulatory policies

tax evasion in new disguise examining tax havens international bank deposits abstract recent efforts to reduce international tax evasion focus on information exchange with tax havens using bilateral bank data for 1397 countrypairs in a balanced quarterly panel from 2003 i to 2017 iv we first show that information on request treaties with tax havens reduce bank deposits in tax havens by 27 5 second also deposits from tax havens in high tax countries decline after such treaties are signed giving authorities a second angle to detect tax evasion both reactions dissipate overt time and treaties signed after 2010 trigger no further reactions these results cannot be explained by deposit shifting alone and we find no evidence of transitioning into legality third recent policy initiatives based on the automatic exchange of bank information lead to very similar initial reactions as earlier treaties consistent with adjustments on the part of tax evaders this suggests that tax evaders adapt to established information exchange treaties by using new disguises to hide their true income and react again to new measures these results cast doubt on the effectiveness of current forms of information exchange to tackle international tax evasion

cheating ourselves the economics of tax evasion no government can announce a tax system and then rely on taxpayers sense of duty to remit what is owed some dutiful people will undoubtedly pay what they owe but many others will not over time the ranks of the dutiful will shrink as they see how they are being taken advantage of by the others thus paying taxes must be made a legal responsibility of citizens with penalties attendant on noncompliance but even in the face of those penalties substantial tax evasion exists and always has the history of taxation is replete with episodes of evasion often notable for their inventiveness during the third century many wealthy romans buried their jewelry or stocks of gold coin to evade the luxury tax and homeowners in eighteenth century england temporarily bricked up their fireplaces to escape notice of the hearth tax collector webber and wildavsky 1986 p 141 this essay reviews what is known about the magnitude nature and determinants of tax evasion with an emphasis on the u s income tax alm 1999 andreoni erard and feinstein 1998 and slemrod and yitzhaki 2002 offer more comprehensive recent reviews of the literature it then places this information into a conceptual and policy context

what saved the indian banking system state ownership or state guarantees the global financial crisis which began in the fall of 2007 and progressively worsened in 2008 affected the indian financial sector beginning only in 2008 while indian financial firms have been fairly resilient compared with their global counterparts we show that indian private sector firms faced greater losses compared with public sector firms during the crisis period of 2008 09 we use a stock market based measure of systemic risk marginal expected shortfall mes to determine the systemic risk contributed by each indian financial firm for the period preceding the crisis january december 2007 and compare it to its realised returns during the crisis january 2008 february 2009 our results show that public sector firms outperformed private sector firms despite having greater systemic risk during the crisis we conclude that investors rewarded indian public sector firms with greater systemic risk while penalising private sector firms with similar risk we attribute this finding to the explicit and implicit government backing of public sector banks we find that riskier public sector banks with high ex ante systemic risk and low tier 1 capital received greater capital support from the government

cross border tax evasion under a unilateral fatca regime abstract cross border tax evasion has emerged in recent years as a central issue in tax enforcement traditionally the legal regime governing cross border tax enforcement was based on information exchange upon request in 2010 the us congress enacted the foreign account tax compliance act fatca which seeks to induce foreign financial institutions ffis to participate in a global regime of automatic information reporting of the income of us residents to the us government this paper presents a simple theoretical model of cross border investment that analyzes the consequences of this unilateral fatca regime the model emphasizes cross border investors heterogeneous intrinsic motivation to comply with tax law as well as the impact of information reporting requirements on the cost of providing financial services in fatca compliant equilibria in which ffis report information to the us government ffis face a higher cost of providing financial services increasing the fees charged to their accountholders consequently tax compliant behavior such as investing via their domestic financial sector becomes more costly for foreign residents under certain conditions a unilateral fatca regime causes increased cross border tax evasion among residents of foreign countries this result is robust to various extensions

estimating a bayesian stochastic frontier for the indian banking system abstract this paper employs a bayesian stochastic frontier providing exact inference on both cost and profit efficiencies of the indian banking sector in the period of 2000 2006 we also test for the inclusion of off balance sheet data in model specification the findings suggest that public banks are the most efficient followed by private and foreign banks however the latter largely improved profit efficiency outperforming domestic banks by the end of the sample accounting for off balance sheet activities significantly improves profit efficiency levels

deregulation ownership and productivity growth in the banking industry evidence from india this paper analyzes the relationship between deregulation and total factor productivity tfp growth in the indian banking industry using a generalized shadow cost function approach tfp growth is decomposed into a technological change a scale and a miscellaneous component a disaggregated panel data analysis using the population of public and private banks over 1985 96 that covers both pre and post deregulation periods indicates that a significant decline in regulatory distortions and the anticipated increase in tfp growth have not yet materialized following deregulation while private sector banks have improved their performance mainly due to the freedom to expand output public sector banks have not responded well to the deregulation measures

unequal but fluid social mobility in chile in comparative perspective a major finding in comparative mobility research is the high similarity across countries and the lack of association between mobility and other national attributes with one exception higher inequality seems to be associated with lower mobility evidence for the mobility inequality link is however inconclusive largely because most mobility studies have been conducted in advanced countries with relatively similar levels of inequality this article introduces chile to the comparative project as the 10th most unequal country in the world chile is an adjudicative case if high inequality results in lower mobility chile should be significantly more rigid than its industrialized peers this hypothesis is disproved by the analysis despite vast economic inequality chile is as fluid if not more so than the much more equal industrialized nations furthermore there is no evidence of a decline in mobility as the result of the increase in inequality during the market oriented transformation of the country

the desirability of a permanent tax amnesty abstract there are two main concerns about tax amnesty first if it is anticipated it may increase cheating and reduce the efficiency of the tax system second amnesty may be inequitable by letting cheaters off the hook however several federal governments currently hold a policy of long term or permanent tax amnesty in apparent defiance of these concerns this paper examines fully anticipated tax amnesty and finds that it is possible for a permanent tax amnesty to actually increase rather than decrease the efficiency and equity of the tax system

coordination and the fight against tax havens abstract the success or failure of the fight against tax havens is the outcome of a many player coordination game between a tax haven and its potential investors key determinants are the costly international pressure and the size of the haven country s revenue pool the latter is determined endogenously by the decisions of many individual investors our analysis suggests a non standard market model that explains why haven countries would ever comply with international standards of transparency despite the large empirically observable returns in the tax haven business it also alludes to why service fees in tax havens can be positive despite a competitive financial market with multiple tax havens furthermore we identify a trade off between the fight against tax havens and high tax rates finally low fines for disclosed offshore tax evasion e g in special programs for tax evaders who voluntarily report their offshore wealth strengthen haven countries against international pressure

financial deregulation and total factor productivity change an empirical study of turkish commercial banks abstract in january 1980 a new liberal economic policy was adopted in turkey to promote financial market development and increase the efficiency and productivity of the financial sector by fostering competition among banks as a result of this policy the turkish banking system witnessed a series of legal structural and institutional changes throughout the 1980s to enhance their competitive viability turkish banks responded by streamlining their operations and investing in new technology utilizing a dea type malmquist total factor productivity change index we examine productivity growth efficiency change and technical progress in turkish commercial banks during the deregulation of financial markets in turkey we found that all forms of turkish banks although in different magnitudes have recorded significant productivity gains driven mostly by efficiency increases rather than technical progress efficiency increases however were mostly owing to improved resource management practices rather than improved scales our results also indicate that private banks began to close their performance gap with public banks in the new environment

the economics of tax amnesties abstract this paper examines some of the economic implications of tax amnesties we present a model where individuals are initially uncertain about the disutility from tax evasion when they file their tax returns if they later learn that they would like to be more honest than they have been an amnesty gives them an opportunity to report additional income we also show that as the probability of an amnesty rises people report less income as a consequence an optimal collection policy requires the government to balance the cost of lost tax revenue against the gains from an amnesty

evolution of banking efficiency within an unstable macroeconomic environment the case of turkish commercial banks this paper analyses the efficiency performance of the turkish banking sector between 1988 and 1999 a period characterized by increasing macroeconomic instability the technical and scale efficiencies of turkish commercial banks are measured with the use of nonparametric data envelopment analysis the empirical results suggest that over the sample period both pure technical and scale efficiency measures show a great variation and the sector did not achieve sustained efficiency gains it is also reported that the sector suffers mainly from scale inefficiency and scale inefficiency in turn is due to decreasing returns to scale there are also reported differences in the efficiency performance of commercial banks with different ownership status in addition the relationships between profitability asset quality size and the two definitions of efficiency are considered efficient banks are more profitable and pure technical efficiency and scale inefficiency are positively related to size the trend in th

financial sector reforms in developing countries the indian experience this study is based on the premise that the success failure of financial sector reforms depends heavily on country specific factors and makes an attempt to examine these factors in the indian context the financial sector reforms analysed in this paper include the deregulation of interest rates increasing competition and foreign ownership and the introduction of financial supervision we argue that an economic rationale for a gradualist approach to financial reform is that it is stability enhancing furthermore we suggest that india s complex political economy has resulted in a gradual approach to reform and this approach has been successful along the dimension of banking stability