The Elasticity of Taxable Income: The Case of South Africa

A key tax policy parameter that has received much attention in the international literature, but about which there is substantial uncertainty, is the overall elasticity of taxable income. The size of this parameter is central to the formulation of tax and transfer policy, as well as for the study of the welfare implications of tax decisions. This paper uses a panel of individual tax returns for the period 2009–2013 and the phenomenon of “bracket creep” to construct instrumental variable estimates of the sensitivity of income to changes in tax rates. Estimates suggest that the overall elasticity of taxable income is approximately 0.3, while that of broad income is significantly lower. The overall response is primarily driven by the elastic response of taxable income for high‐income earners, who have an elasticity of closer to 0.4. Using the elasticity estimates within an optimal tax framework, it is determined that the optimal marginal tax rate for the top 10% of income earners is broadly in line with the current income tax schedule. However, results also suggest that there is little scope for raising marginal rates on high‐income earners further without inducing a negative revenue response.     

The co-occurrence of self-observed norm-conforming behavior,reduction of zero observations and remaining measurement quality

Norm-violating behavior is characterized by clear social norms which prescribe the non-occurrence of that behavior. From the theoretical framework of Allport it is derived that specifically norm-conformation is consistent, while violating norms is expected to be inconsistent and more circumstantial. This is in contrast to test-theoretic approaches of delinquent behavior that assume that various norm-violating responses form a consistent answer pattern that is scalable and reliable. In this study we study the inter-correlations, scalability and reliability of norm-violating responses and their relation with the reduction of zero observations. In concordance with Allport’s view it is expected that different norm-violating self-report items have limited interrelatedness and are limited in scalability and reliability in the norm-violating sub-population. The NLSY98 self-report data show that a large majority of respondents (69 %) conform systematically to all ten different norms, while only nine percent admits more than two different violations. The results show that in subsamples of norm-violating respondents, the correlations between items become closer to zero, dependent on the amount of zero reduction. Furthermore, both Loevinger’s H coefficient of scalability and scale reliability become unsatisfactorily low, when 35 % or more strict norm-conforming subjects are removed.     

Accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts: An empirical comparison for the G7

In this paper, we use survey data to analyze the accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts. We analyze a large panel of individual forecasts that has not previously been analyzed in the literature. We provide evidence on the properties of forecasts for all G7-countries and for four different macroeconomic variables. Our results show a high degree of dispersion of forecast accuracy across forecasters. We also find that there are large differences in the performances of forecasters, not only across countries but also across different macroeconomic variables. In general, the forecasts tend to be biased in situations where the forecasters have to learn about large structural shocks or gradual changes in the trend of a variable. Furthermore, while a sizable fraction of forecasters seem to smooth their GDP forecasts significantly, this does not apply to forecasts made for other macroeconomic variables.     

Information Sharing in Contests

We study the incentives to share private information ahead of contests, such as markets with promotional competition, procurement contests, or research and development (R&D). We consider the cases where firms have (i) independent values and (ii) common values of winning the contest. In both cases, when decisions to share information are made independently, sharing information is strictly dominated. With independent values, an industry‐wide agreement to share information can arise in equilibrium. Expected effort is lower with than without information sharing. With common values, an industry‐wide agreement to share information never arises in equilibrium. Expected effort is higher with than without information sharing.     

The warnings puzzle: an upstream explanation

Enforcement agencies issuing warnings are an empirical regularity in the enforcement of laws and regulations, but a challenge to the standard economic theory of public enforcement. A number of recent contributions explain the popularity of warnings as a response to information asymmetries between regulator and regulatee. We offer a distinct, but complementary explanation: Warnings can serve as a signaling device in the interaction between the enforcement agency and its budget-setting authority. By using costly warnings for minor offenses that would otherwise not be pursued, the agency can generate observable activity to escape budget cuts in subsequent periods. We show in a stylized model that warnings may indeed occur in an equilibrium of a game in which warnings are entirely unproductive in the agency-regulatee interaction, and thereby derive a testable hypothesis on regulatory agency behavior.     

Information acquisition in conflicts

This paper considers incentives for information acquisition ahead of conflicts. First, we characterize the (unique) equilibrium of the all-pay auction between two players with one-sided asymmetric information where one player has private information about his valuation. Then, we use our results to study information acquisition prior to an all-pay auction. If the decision to acquire information is observable, but not the information received, one-sided asymmetric information can occur endogenously in equilibrium. Moreover, the cut-off values of the cost of information that determine equilibrium information acquisition are higher than those in the first best. Thus, information acquisition is excessive. In contrast, with open or covert information acquisition, the equilibrium cut-off values are as in the first best.