The relationship between tax evasion and tax revenue in Chang, Lai and Chang (1999)

Chang, Lai and Chang (1999) use a micro-founded short-term macroeconomic model, with an imperfectly competitive market, to analyze, among other issues, the relationship between tax evasion and tax revenue. They show that this relationship depends upon the market structure. In particular, when the market becomes perfectly competitive, this relationship can be non monotonic. Although CLC give an intuition of this result, based on the interaction of two opposite effects, they do not make explicit the form of this relationship. The goal of this note is precisely to show that, within the Chang, Lai and Chang (1999) model, one can completely characterize the shape of the relationship between tax evasion and tax revenue under perfect competition. Under some parametric conditions, the tax revenue decreases with tax evasion otherwise, their relationship takes the form of a `Laffer curve'.

Fiscal federalism, local public works and corruption

In ¯fiscal federal systems, local public works that generate spillovers are often ¯nanced by transfers from higher levels of government. In this article, we consider a governmental hierarchy composed by a Federal and a Local Government. The former delegates to the latter the task of ¯nding a ¯rm to undertake a local public work. As the Local Government has more information about the e±ciency of the firm, it communicates its private information to the Federal Government which decides the way to fund the project. If side-contracts between the local authority and the ¯rm in charge with constructing the project are feasible, di®erent stakes for collusion may arise. The Local Government can overstate the e±ciency of the ¯rm to obtain extra rents or can also understate it, to ensure the e®ective undertaking of the project. In order to ¯nd the optimal allocations, we derive a \Collusion-Proofness" property which states that, in order to maximize its expected welfare, the Federal Government can restrict to o®er collusion-proof contracts. These contracts indicate the transfers between the Federal Government, the local authority and the ¯rm of constructors. Finally we characterize the distortions set to attenuate the resulting implementation costs. They concern the cost of the project and the decision about its e®ective undertaking. The most important result of this article is that the undertaking of useless projects, at an in°ated cost, is an optimal response of the Federal Government to the threat of collusion between the local authorities and the firm of constructors.

Bailouts in federations : is a hard budget constraint always best?

This article analyses hard and soft budget constraints in a federation, where there is a moral hazard problem between the central and the regional governments. Regional governments can avoid a bailout from the center by exerting costly effort. In this setting, a hard budget constraint is not always optimal because it can provide excessive incentives for high effort, and thus discourage investment that is socially efficient. Thus, a hard budget constraint can imply the opposite kind of inefficiency that emerges under a soft budget constraint, where the common pool problem can give rise to inefficiently low effort and overinvestment

Are Hard Budget Constraints for Sub-National Governments Always Efficient?

In fiscally decentralized countries, sub-national governments (SNGs) may face soft budget constraints and consequently invest and borrow too much. The policy literature claims that, with competitive capital markets and central governments imposing hard budget constraints (HBCs), inefficient investment by SNGs should not arise. We present a model where this is not the case : HBCs can be too "hard" and discourage investment that is socially efficient. The model combines a dynamic commitment problem as in Kornai, Maskin and Roland (2004) for central government with a moral hazard problem between central and SNG. The HBC over-incentivises the SNG to provide effort by penalizing it too much for project failure, thus leading ultimately to the possibility that socially efficient projects may not be undertaken.Fiscal federalism ; Bailouts ; Hard budget constraints

Do insurance defrauders want to be punished ?.

We analyze a Principal-Agent model of an insurer who faces an adverse selection problem. He is unable to observe if his client has a high risk or a low risk of having an accident. At the underwriting of the contract, the insurer requests the client to declare his risk. After that, the former can costly audit the truthfulness of this announcement. If the audit confirms a false declaration, the insurer is legally allowed to punish the defrauder. We characterize the e¢cient contracts when this punishment is bounded from above by a legal restriction. Then, we do some comparative statics on the efficient contracts and on the agent’s utility. The most important result of this paper concerns the legal limit to a defrauder’s punishment. We prove that there exists a unique value of this legal limit that maximizes the expected utility of a high risk type. Facing this particular value of the legal limit to a defrauder’s punishment, the insurer will effectively audit a low risk report. We also show that this particular value increases with the probability of facing a high risk policy- holder. Therefore, when this probability is su¢ciently high, the nullity of the contract is not enough. From the point of view of a potential defrauder, the law should allow harder sanctions. This is an striking result because the nullity of the contract is a common sanction for this kind of fraud in the USA and in some European countries.Insurance; Principal-Agent; Adverse Selection; Fraud; Audit; Penalties;

Exerting local tax effort or lobbying for central transfers?: Evidence from Argentina

In many countries fiscal decentralization characterizes the relationship among different levels of government. In those countries, local authorities have the prerogative to tax their constituencies. However, fiscal decentralization is seldom balanced in terms of tax and expenditure assignments. In order to equalize tax capacities, to internalize spillovers or to achieve national policy objectives, central governments often provide transfers to lower levels of government. These transfers may affect the incentives to manage or to improve fiscal performance. Specifically, according to Litvack, Ahmad and Bird (1998), such transfers may induce low `tax effort' in the regions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate theoretically and empirically this relationship between intergovernmental transfers and local tax effort. An initial problem to deal with is the definition of `tax effort' in itself. First, one can associate tax effort to high tax rates. Smart (1998) asserted that such association is inadequate. Second, one can measure tax effort using actual tax revenues or the difference between actual the predicted value of tax revenues. This approach has been mainly adopted by the empirical literature on the relationship between intergovernmental transfers and local tax effort [Baretti, Huber and Lichtblau (2000), Von Hagen and Hepp (2000), Jha, Mohanty, Chattergee and Chitkara (1999), Sagbas (2001)]. Although tax revenue is an accurate and observable variable, still one can hardly say that it is a good estimate of tax effort. The reason is for a given region in a given time period tax revenue is affected by many potential variables outside the control of local governments (like idiosyncratic shocks to some specific tax bases) which are seldom well controlled for in estimates of tax capacity. In practice local tax effort encompasses a broad set of actions. One of them is clearly the battle against tax evasion. In spite of its importance, this problem has been only recently addressed by the local public finance literature. Bordignon, Manasse and Tabellini (1996), presented a model where a local government exerts costless effort to catch tax evader workers and they showed how intergovernmental transfers affect tax enforcement. The drawback of this model is that, in reality, tax enforcement is not costless and the cost depends upon other variables chosen by local authorities, like the efficiency of the local tax administration. Although Prud'homme (1995) and Tanzi (1996) have informally signaled the possible inefficiencies of the local tax administrations, this feature has not been raised by the theoretical or the empirical literature. The purpose of this paper is precisely to incorporate such dimension in the assessment of the relationship between intergovernmental transfers and local tax effort. The theoretical framework assumes that in each region there is one representative habitant and a local government. The habitant posses a low or a high-valued property. The local government maximizes tax revenues. In a first period, the local government invests resources to improve the efficiency of the tax administration or to lobby the central government in order to obtain discretionary transfers. This decision is affected by the political cost of reforming the tax administration and on the ability of the local government to negotiate with the central government. Thus, in our model, intergovernmental transfers are endogenous and simultaneously determined with the reform of the local tax system. In a second period, the local government sets the property tax schedule. But, as the local government is unable to observe the value of the property, it has to rely on the habitant announcing this value. Finally, in the third period, the local government decides to enforce the tax law by randomly auditing such announcement. If the habitant is discovered having misreported, the local government sets the corresponding property tax and imposes a penalty. We assume that audit is perfect but costly; the cost depending on the efficiency of the local tax administration. We solve the model backwards. As the local government cannot commit to the auditing probability when it designs its tax policy, the equilibrium of the audit-report game is in mixed strategies, with auditing and tax evasion. Then we find the optimal tax schedule. In order to reduce the stake for tax evasion, the local government distorts downwardly the high-valued property tax. Finally, we solve for the decision of the local government regarding how much resources to invest for improving the efficiency of the tax administration. We find that this decision is negatively associated with the domestic political costs and positively with the ability to negotiate with the Federal Government. The predictions of the model are empirically tested using data for Argentina. The theory suggests a two-step approach. In a first stage we run a probit estimation where the probability of a certain province to reform its tax system (or receiving discretionary transfers) in a given year will be correlated with domestic political variables (e.g. divided government) and also with variables describing its bargaining power vis a vis the federal authorities (e.g. political representation at the National Congress, political party of the President vis a vis that of the Governor). In a second stage, we include this exogenous instrument of tax reform in a regression where the evolution of actual provincial tax receipts are regressed against this variable plus other controls like population, density, provincial income distribution and production structure. Notice that this two stage empirical approach allow us to deal with a frequent problem encountered in the empirical literature given by the endogeneity bias affecting some of the variables of interest, like federal transfers (e.g. Jha, Mohanty, Chattergee and Chitkara (1999), Sagbas (2001)).local tax effort - discretionary transfers - tax enforcement

Formal and real fiscal federalism in Argentina

In this note we describe, on the one hand, the formal institutional structure of the Argentine fiscal federalism. Then, on the other hand, we show how fiscal federalism really works in Argentina. We analyze data on fiscal behavior of the federal and provincial governments during the nineties. The goal of this note is precisely to point that one of the main issues of the current situation in Argentina is precisely the difference between ‘formal’ and ‘real’ institutions. At the heart of such difference is the lack of enforcement of national laws and formal inter-provincial agreements. We illustrate this by studying how formal rules to the provincial borrowing have functioned during the last decade

Are hard budget constraints for sub-national governments always efficient?

In fiscally decentralized countries, sub-national governments (SNGs) may face soft budget constraints and consequently invest and borrow too much. The policy literature claims that, with competitive capital markets and central governments imposing hard budget contraints (HBCs), inefficient investment by SNGs should not arise. We present a model where this is not the case: HBCs can be too "hard" and discourage investment that is socially efficient. The model combines a dynamic commitment problem in Kornai, Maskin and Roland (2004) for central government with a moral hazard problem between central and SNG. The HBC over-incentivises the SNG to provide effort by penalizing it too much for project failure, thus leading ultimately to the possibility that socially efficient projects may not be undertaken

Modernization of Tax Administrations and Optimal Fiscal Policies

Since Sandmo (1981), many articles have analyzed optimal fiscal policies in economies with tax evasion. All share a feature: they assume that the cost of enforcing the tax law is exogenous. However, governments often invest resources to reduce these enforcement costs. In a very simple model, we incorporate such investments in the analysis of an optimal fiscal policy. We characterize their optimal level and we show numerically how they interact with the other dimensions of the optimal fiscal policy. Finally, we highlight the differences between our results and those obtained in a model without investment in the tax administration