How Do Household Tasks Shape Employment Contracts? The Provision of Care in Portugal

This study illustrates the complexities involved in outsourcing domestic work to the market. It draws on an original dataset of paid domestic workers in Portugal to examine how specific tasks interact with and explain contractual arrangements. A fuzzy cluster analysis categorizes paid domestic workers into caregivers and cleaners; however, a great degree of overlap implies that caring also entails cleaning tasks necessary for the care receiver’s well-being. A subsequent Tobit regression analysis shows that caregivers have more formal and stable contracts but earn lower wages and have longer working hours relative to cleaners. The study finds a segmentation of national origin and that some migrants are at a disadvantage in care work. The study also examines how employers deal with the idiosyncrasies of domestic work such as navigating trust-related issues.     

Taxes and firm investment

We investigate the firm-level investment response to unanticipated narrative shocks to average personal and corporate tax rates using a universal micro dataset of publicly-traded U.S. firms for the post-1976 period. Using local projections, we show that: (i) corporate tax shocks have significant effects on investment while personal tax shocks do not; (ii) corporate income tax responses are negative overall, and this result is driven by smaller firms who face larger borrowing constraints, especially when the accompanying monetary policy is contractionary or output gap is slack; (iii) there is some evidence of positive personal income tax responses during monetary contractions by dividend-paying firms, which is consistent with the recent literature.     

论国际税收竞争与竞争性的中国税制

本文从国际税收竞争基本概念入手,明确国际税收竞争与有害税收竞争的区别与联系.运用实证分析的方法,说明世界各国税收竞争的发展与现状,指出税收竞争是经济全球化发展的历史必然.通过比较,认为我国税制具有一定的竞争力,但仍存在一些不足.为了完善税制,本文提出建立竞争性中国现代税制的初步设想.     

我国进行国际税收竞争的最优战略与策略分析

本文依据国际税收竞争对我国的积极意义以及我国是发展中大国的战略定位,认为我国应该采取"积极、适度竞争,理性、必要协调"的战略;在竞争策略的选择上,通过对我国主要资本来源国对待本国资本海外投资的规定以及竞争对手国吸引外资相关做法的研究,提出我国应选择"低税率、宽税基、少优惠"的竞争方式和手段,并应注重形成有比较竞争力的税收制度,而不应进行频繁的政策调整.     

The effect of a tax training program on tax compliance and business outcomes of starting entrepreneurs: Evidence from a field experiment

This paper estimates the long-term impact of a short, partly personalized, mandatory tax training program on tax compliance and business outcomes of first-time entrepreneurs. To this end, we combine survey data, audit data and unique register data from the Netherlands' Tax and Customs Administration with a three year long randomized experiment. The results show that the training affects specific domains of tax compliant behavior. Moreover, it has no impact on business survival, but treated entrepreneurs have significantly higher profits compared to the control group due to lower business costs. These outcomes are partially supportive of our hypotheses developed from theories on tax compliance and mental accounting.     

Political competition,tax salience and accountability. Theory and evidence from Italy

This paper argues that electoral competition may hinder rather than foster political accountability, especially when elected officers can choose among a number of tax instruments. We develop a political agency model showing that politicians in more competitive jurisdictions use less salient tax instruments more intensely. Defining salience as visibility or, analogously, as voters' awareness of the costs associated with specific government revenue sources, we argue that voters are less likely to hold politicians to account for the associated tax burden of a less salient instrument. This in turn implies that strategic politicians will more heavily rely on less salient revenue sources when electoral competition is stronger. Using data on Italian municipal elections and taxes over a 10-year period, we determine the degree of salience of various tax instruments, including property taxes (high salience) and government fees for official documents (low salience). We then show that mayors facing stronger competition for re-election use less salient tax instruments more intensely.     

Firm-level determinants of tax evasion in transition economies

Business tax evasion is an important issue for governments. Yet the factors that determine business tax evasion have not been sufficiently examined in the literature in general, and in transition contexts in particular. To address this gap, this study uses the WB/EBRD Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) database with a sample of over 12,692 firms from 26 transition economies. Applying various modelling strategies, we argue that tax evasion is a function of firm-level and institutional-level variables. We contribute to the literature by providing robust evidence showing that the perceived tax burden has a positive impact on tax evasion. We also find that the tax evasive behaviour of firms is positively influenced by low trust in government and in the judicial system as well as by higher perceptions of corruption and higher compliance costs. We find that smaller firms, individual businesses and firms in sectors that are less visible to the tax administration are more likely to get involved in evasive behaviour. Overall, institutional factors play an important role in determining firms’ tax evasion behaviour in transition economies. This finding has important policy implications.     

Stochastic optimization of sustainable hybrid generation bioethanol supply chains

This paper focuses on designing a hybrid generation bioethanol supply chain (HGBSC) that will account for economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability under various uncertainties. A stochastic mixed integer linear programming model is proposed to design an optimal HGBSC. A case study set in the state of North Dakota in the United States is used as an application of the proposed model. The results suggest that the designs of optimal HGBSC change when different sustainability standards are applied. In addition, sensitivity analysis is conducted to provide deeper understanding of the proposed model.     

Mapping tax compliance: Assemblages,distributed action and practices: A new way of doing tax research

Tax compliance denotes the act of reporting and paying taxes in accordance with the tax laws. Current social science scholarship on tax compliance can almost entirely be divided into behavioural psychology analyses and critical tax studies. This article, which presents two cases of how tax compliance is constructed, challenges the explanatory reaches of today's social science approaches, arguing that an alternative approach to understanding tax compliance is worthwhile exploring. This other choice of approach, inspired by actor–network theory (ANT), adopts a more practice-oriented focus that studies tax compliance where it takes place as well as what it is made of. Consequently, this article argues that tax compliance is a socio-material assemblage and that complying is a distributed action. The article concludes by highlighting how an ANT approach contributes to the further theoretical development of social science studies of taxation.     

Integrating corporate ownership and pension fund structures: A general equilibrium approach

This paper studies pension fund design in the context of investment in the debt and equity of a firm. We employ a general equilibrium framework to demonstrate that: (i) the asset location ‘puzzle’ is purely a partial equilibrium phenomenon, conceived in a risk neutral setting, that disappears with the introduction of sufficient risk aversion; (ii) the inability of policy makers to manage an economy with multiple firms yields a mixed equilibrium, where bonds are observed in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts; and (iii) the Pareto-efficient pension plan comprises of a defined benefit plan.