The Effect of Gender Equality on International Soccer Performance

In this paper, we propose a new estimation strategy that uses the variation in success between the male and the female national soccer team within a country to identify the causal impact of gender equality on women's soccer performance. In particular, we analyze whether within-country variations in labor force participation rates and life expectancies between the genders, which serve as measures for the country's gender equality, are able to explain differences in the international success of male and female national soccer teams. Our results reveal that differences in male and female labor force participation rates and life expectancies are able to explain the international soccer performance of female teams, but not that of male teams, suggesting that gender equality is an important driver of female sport success

Gaus on Coercion and Welfare-State Capitalism: A Critique

This article examines a novel line of argument in support of welfare-state capitalism proposed by Gerald Gaus. The novelty of Gaus’ argument lies in its contention that welfare-state capitalism can be justified on the basis of the contractualist mode of justification made famous by Rawls. Gaus argues that economic regimes, such as propertyowning democracy, are more coercive than welfare-state capitalism insofar as they require a greater degree of tax-imposed redistribution among citizens. Given the degree of coercion needed by these regimes, he contends that parties to a contract would not agree to them, whereas they would agree to welfare-state capitalism by virtue of the lesser degree of coercion it needs. It is argued in this article that Gaus fails to show that welfare-state capitalism is less coercive than property-owning democracy. Indeed, once one directs one’s attention towards those with the smallest range of valuable opportunities for action, there is reason to worry more about the coercion imposed by welfare-state capitalism than by property-owning democracy

Happy Taxpayers? Income Taxation and Well-Being

This paper offers a first empirical investigation of how labor taxation (income and payroll taxes) affects individuals' well-being. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in tax rules over time and across demographic groups using 26 years of German panel data. We find that the tax effect on subjective well-being is significant and positive when controlling for income net of taxes. This interesting result is robust to numerous specification checks. It is consistent with several possible channels through which taxes affect welfare including public goods, insurance, redistributive taste and tax morale

Tax Compliance and Information Provision - A Field Experiment with Small Firms

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Experimental Evidence on the Relationship between Tax Evasion Opportunities and Labor Supply

Motivated by the observation that access to evasion opportunities is distributed heterogeneously across the labor market, this paper examines the extent to which labor supply elasticities with respect to tax rates depend on such evasion opportunities. We first set up a theoretical model to formally show that labor supply responses depend on access to evasion. The model is then tested in a lab experiment in which all participants undertake a real-effort task over several rounds. Subjects face a tax rate, which varies across rounds and are required to pay taxes on earned income. The treatment group is given the opportunity to underreport income while the control group is not. We find zero labor effort responses to tax rates in the control group and positive statistically significant adjustments in the treatment group; suggesting that both groups indeed react differently to taxes