Who participates in tax amnesties? Self-selection of risk-averse taxpayers

In this paper we model taxpayer participation in an unanticipated tax amnesty which can be entered by paying a fixed amount. Taxpayers are characterized by a Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) utility function and differ in relative risk aversion coefficient and in income. With minor changes the same model also describes a FATOTA (Fixed Amount of Taxes or Tax Audit) system. Our results show that amnesties may fail as a self-selective device to fully separate large-scale from small-scale tax evaders and to extract resources from the former. Only taxpayers whose relative risk aversion falls within a given interval participate, while those whose evasion is too small or too large do not enter. The model is used to estimate relative risk aversion and tax evasion of participants in the 1991 and 1994 Italian income tax amnesties.tax amnesty, tax evasion, relative risk aversion, self-selection

Universal Resource Lifecycle Management

This paper presents a model and a tool that allows Web users to define, execute, and manage lifecycles for any artifact available on the Web. In the paper we show the need for lifecycle management of Web artifacts, and we show in particular why it is important that non-programmers are also able to do this. We then discuss why current models do not allow this, and we present a model and a system implementation that achieves lifecycle management for any URI-identifiable and accessible object. The most challenging parts of the work lie in the definition of a simple but universal model and system (and in particular in allowing universality and simplicity to coexist) and in the ability to hide from the lifecycle modeler the complexity intrinsic in having to access and manage a variety of resources, which differ in nature, in the operations that are allowed on them, and in the protocols and data formats required to access them

Risk Attitudes and the Shift of Liability from the Principal to the Agent.

This paper studies the problem of illegal behavior within a principal-agent framework. The agent performs an illegal activity which benefits the principal, and can exert an effort that negatively affects the likelihood of detection of the violation.Two opposite legal regimes are considered: in the first, only the risk neutral principal is strictly liable; in the second, only the risk averse agent is The monetary sanction and the probability of detection function are the same in both cases. Our models shows that shifting the liability upon the risk averse agent reduces the principal net benefit, thus favoring deterrence of wrongdoing; however, it can also either increase or reduce the agent effort in cheating. For a specific model we are able to characterize cases in which a reduction in cheating prevails, and shifting the liability upon the agent has clear-cut beneficial effects on compliance.

Tax evasion in a principal-agent model with self-protection

Gatekeepers have an increasing role in taxation and regulation. While burdening them with legal liability for misconducts that benefit those who resort to their services actually discourages wrongdoings — as will be clarified in the paper — an alienation effect can also arise. That is, the gatekeeper might become more interested in covering up the illegal behavior and in cooperating with the perpetrator. Such perverse effects are difficult to detect and to measure. This paper studies the problem with respect to tax evasion by firms, by building upon the classical Allingham and Sandmo (1972) model and by providing a more detailed description of the "concealment costs" than that available in the literature, which often simply makes assumptions about their existence and their functional form. The relationship between a risk neutral firm owner aiming at evading taxes and a risk averse gatekeeper is described through a simple principal-agent framework. The paper highlights the role of legal rules pertaining to liability for tax evasion in shaping the parties choices, since concealment costs vary according to whether the risk neutral principal or the risk averse agent are held responsible when tax evasion is detected. The main result of the analysis is that there are simple conditions under which one can easily infer whether harnessing the agent is socially beneficial.tax evasion, firm, agency, risk aversion

ResEval: A Mashup Platform for Research Evaluation

Bibliometrics has changed out the way the research evaluation conducted, and it is widely used to evaluate research groups, individual research's, department and many more. However establishing fair criteria to evaluate the scientific community, as well as individual publications and researcher, is a tough task and constitutes a challenge that has not been achieved yet. This paper addresses the problem of research evaluation and introduces ResEval, a mashup platform that enables the creation of customize metrics and their computation in order to make the scientific evaluation easier. This platform addresses various problems with current approaches such as data incompleteness, flexibility in defining new metrics, fixed UI restrictions for the customization of metrics and to apply filters

Liquid Journals: Knowledge Dissemination in the Web Era

In this paper we redefine the notion of "scientific journal" to update it to the age of the Web. We explore the historical reasons behind the current journal model, and we show that this model is essentially the same today, even if the Web has made dissemination essentially free. We propose a notion of liquid and personal journals that evolve continuously in time and that are targeted to serve individuals or communities of arbitrarily small or large scales. The liquid journals provide "interesting" content, in the form of "scientific contributions" that are "related" to a certain paper, topic, or area, and that are posted (on their web site, repositories, traditional journals) by "inspiring" researchers. As such, the liquid journal separates the notion of "publishing" (which can be achieved by submitting to traditional peer review journals or just by posting content on the Web) from the appearance of contributions into the journals, which are essentially collections of content. In this paper we introduce the liquid journal model, and demonstrate through some examples its value to individuals and communities. Finally, we describe an architecture and a working prototype that implements the proposed model