ON THE DETERMINANTS OF LOCAL TAX RATES: NEW EVIDENCE FROM SPAIN

This article examines the determinants of local tax rates. For the two main local taxes in Spain—the property tax and the motor vehicle tax—we test the existence of tax mimicking, yardstick competition, and political trends in a sample of 2,713 municipalities. Using various spatial models, the results support the hypothesis of tax mimicking, with coefficients above 0.40. We also show the relevance of political variables such as the ideology of incumbents and political fragmentation. The fact that incumbents with weaker political support exhibit stronger mimicking behavior is interpreted as evidence in favor of yardstick competition. Finally, we find that incumbents mimic neighboring municipalities ruled by the same political party, confirming the political trends hypothesis. (JEL C31, H71, H77)     

Partial Identification of Marginal Treatment Effects with Discrete Instruments and Misreported Treatment*

This paper provides partial identification results for the marginal treatment effect (MTE) when the binary treatment variable is potentially misreported and the instrumental variable is discrete. Identification results are derived under smoothness assumptions. Bounds for both the case of misreported treatment and the case of no misreported treatment are derived. The identification results are illustrated by identifying the marginal treatment effects of food stamps on health.     

A Stochastic Minimax Model to Calculate Outstanding Claims

Correct estimation of the Outstanding Claims Reserve, an item that includes Incurred But Not Reported Claims (IBNR) as well as Incurred But Not Enough Reserved Claims (IBNER), is one of the most important issues currently facing actuarial science, due to its effect on the technical and financial stability of insurance companies. The purpose of this paper is to calculate the reserve in a decision-making environment, so that estimates can be made according to accurately defined and previously established rational criteria. Specifically, the estimating process enables a company’s particular situation to be taken into account, by incorporating its approach to the consequences arising from estimation errors into the model. The proposed calculation method gives rise to optimum link ratio estimators that can also be interpreted from a Bayesian perspective, with the advantages associated to such methodology.     

A theory of participatory democracy based on the real case of Porto Alegre

Participatory democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both direct and representative democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy proposals and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The aim of this paper is to understand how participatory democracy operates, and to study its implications over the behavior of citizens and politicians and over the final policy outcomes. To this end, we explore a formal model inspired by the experience of Participatory Budgeting implemented in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, that builds on the model of meetings with costly participation by Osborne et al. [2000. Meetings with costly participation. American Economic Review 90, 927-943].     

How socially derived characteristics of technology shape the adoption of corporate Web 2.0 tools for collaboration

Socially derived characteristics (perceptions of individuals about technology-related characteristics) of Web 2.0 tools are not generally taken into account when decisions are made about which systems to use for collaboration in corporate settings. This exploratory research studies the influence of these characteristics—perceived compatibility, social presence, and group supportability—in the adoption of corporate blogs and validates a theory-grounded model with data from 73 employees. The results show that social presence and users’ values influence perceived usefulness of corporate blogs and play an important role in their adoption, while existing work practices, prior experience and group supportability do not.     

海关估价与转移定价

当涉及货物的估价问题时,海关估价的考虑与所得税方面的考虑是矛盾的。进口商倾向于采用较低的海关价格以便少缴关税,但大多数时候由于所得税的原因,也希望同样货物采用较高的价格（比如高的转移价格）,以便降低利润从而缴纳较低的所得税。     

A mark-up pricing model for price simulations

This paper develops an input/output model of pricing using a mark-up pricing formula. The connection between mark-up pricing and competitive pricing is analyzed through the determination of sectoral equilibrium profit mark-up rates as a function of the profit rate and the capital intensity of each sector. The model is used to analyze the effects on relative prices and the aggregate price level of exogenous changes in the nominal wage rate, tax rates, the exchange rate and world prices. Exogenous changes in the prices of domestically produced commodities are modelled via the imposition of ad valorem tax rates, which yield a measure of the net effect of the exogenous changes. Simulations are carried out under passive price adjustment as well as adjustment with price ceilings. In this last instance the model calculates the endogenously determined reduction in profit mark-ups. Lastly, empirical results of various simulations are presented using data from the Mexican economy.     

The determinants of tax morale in comparative perspective: Evidence from European countries

Applying a multilevel model, we argue that tax morale is a function of individual- and contextual-level variables. Evidence presented in this article, based on the 2004–2005 European Social Survey and information on institutional settings, shows that tax morale in European countries varies systematically with socio-demographic characteristics, personal financial experiences, political attitudes, on the one hand, and regional GDP and tax arrangements on the other hand. Moreover, cross-national differences in tax morale are also related to ethnic and linguistic fractionalizations.     

Evidence of Differences in the Effectiveness of Safety-Net Management in European Union Countries

European Union (EU) financial safety nets are social contracts that assign uncertain benefits and burdens to taxpayers in different member countries. To help national officials to assess their taxpayers’ exposures to loss from partner countries, this paper develops a way to estimate how well markets and regulators in 14 of the EU-15 countries have controlled deposit-institution risk-shifting in recent years. Our method traverses two steps. The first step estimates leverage, return volatility, and safety-net benefits for individual EU financial institutions. For stockholder-owned banks, input data feature 1993–2004 data on stock-market capitalization. Parallel accounting values are used to calculate enterprise value (albeit less precisely) for mutual savings institutions. The second step uses the output from the first step as input into regression models of safety-net benefits and interprets the results. Parameters of the second-step models express differences in the magnitude of safety-net subsidies and in the ability of financial markets and regulators in member countries to restrain the flow of safety-net subsidies to commercial banks and savings institutions. We conclude by showing that banks from high-subsidy and low-restraint countries have initiated and received the lion’s share of cross-border M&A activity. The efficiency, stabilization, and distributional effects of allowing banks to and from differently subsidized environments to expand their operations in partner countries pose policy issues that the EU ought to address.     

Enjoy the silence: an experiment on truth-telling

We analyze experimentally two sender–receiver games with conflictive preferences. In the first game, the sender can choose to tell the truth, to lie, or to remain silent. The latter strategy is costly. In the second game, the receiver must decide additionally whether or not to costly punish the sender after having observed the history of the game. We investigate the existence of two kinds of social preferences: lying aversion and preference for truth-telling. In the first game, senders tell the truth more often than predicted by the sequential equilibrium analysis, they remain silent frequently, and there exists a positive correlation between the probability of being truthful and the probability of remaining silent. Our main experimental result for the extended game shows that those subjects who punish the sender with a high probability after being deceived are precisely those who send fewer but more truthful messages. Finally, we solve for the Perfect Bayesian Nash Equilibria of a reduced form of the baseline game with two types of senders. The equilibrium predictions obtained suggest that the observed excessive truth-telling in the baseline game can be explained by lying aversion but not by a preference for truth-telling.

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Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Financial support through the Ramón y Cajal program of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science is gratefully acknowledged. This work was initiated while the author was working at Maastricht University.