The limits to growth then and now

In this paper the indications of the 1972 report of the club of Rome about the relationship between environment and economic growth are reviewed and compared to the ideas debated nowadays on the same topic. The implications of the stages of growth approach and of the economic growth models are considered. Market failure has a central role when the environment is considered. Hence the main problems of policy design and evaluation and their implications for international cooperation, as studied in a burgeoning literature, are presented.

A Chinese Recipe for Curbing the Evasion of Commodity Taxes?

Verbrauchsteuer, Steuerflucht, China, Consumption tax, Tax evasion, China

Rewarding the consumer for curbing the evasion of commodity taxes?.

Monetary or in-kind transfers can be used as an incentive for consumers to request o.cial receipts for goods they purchase. A novel system of in-kind transfers in the form of lottery tickets has recently been introduced in China. Price subsidies (often granted through tax deductions or refunds) are also widely used. This paper extends the standard model of commodity tax evasion for firms (in a competitive market and under the conjectural variation approach) in order to describe the e.ects of subsidies on tax evasion and in terms of incidence and of government revenue. The role of search costs and of enforcement costs is also taken into account.

Should the death tax die? And should it leave an inheritance?

In this paper we examine the possibility of earmarking inheritance taxes to the financing of a transfer to the poor, aimed at reducing the payoff from small crime and at fostering the fulfillment of basic social responsibilities. A simple model of a society in which there are two types of agents either supplying legal labor or participating in criminal activity is presented. The effects of the transfer are examined with reference to two policy designs and to attitudes toward risk\ of the agents. Financing the transfer through inheritance taxation may be advisable as a way of collecting the needed revenue from agents who are likely to maintain strong enough incentives to good.Inheritance Tax, Crime, Wealth Transfers

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

Mean voting rule and strategical behavior: an experiment

This paper considers the problem of voting about the quantity of a public good. An experiment has been run in order to test the extent of the strategic bias that arises in the individual vote when the social choice rule is to select the mean of the quantities voted for; conflicting theoretical predictions are available in the literature on this purpose. The political implications of the mean rule and its e.ects upon e.ciency are also discussed. The role of voters' information is considered. A comparison is made with the working of the median rule.

In the beginning was the Word. Now is the Copyright

Since 2005 all Roman Pope's teaching is copyrighted. As the tenet of the Catholic Church is that of spreading the faith and teaching all the people, this seems at odds with any restriction of access. The Catholic Church, however, does not represent an exception, since the copyright is applied also in other religions. In this paper a simple model is presented in order to assess the possibility of rationalizing the exercize of the copyright by a religious organization. The analysis provides also more general indications about the working of the copyright, which seems to function more alike the right of drawing a tax than the right of setting a monopoly price, as currently thought.copyright, religion, royalties, taxation

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