Torgler Benno

The history of AI in economics is long and winding, much the same as theevolving field of AI itself. Economists have engaged with AI since its beginnings, albeit in varying degrees and with changing focus across time and places. In this stu...

As artificial intelligence (AI) thrives and propagates through modern life, a keyquestion to ask is how to include humans in future AI? Despite human-involvement at every stage of the pr oduction process from conception and design through t...

The ambiguous phenomenon of corruption has long b een the cause of great theoretical debate ineconomics. By using Structural Equation Modelling, with the two types of corruption as a latent variable, this paper employs causal and indicative...

The field of behavioral taxation dates back at least to the 1950s. In this contribution I willexplore the opportunities and challenges in the area, with a particular focus on tax compliance. I will focus on the data required to make further...

The empirical question of voting preferences and how these may change (swing) is yet to beanswered, as there is little first-hand microeconomic evidence on swing voting. We focus on the interactions between voters’ age and political cynic...

Although understanding how multiculturalism shapes society is imperative in today's globalized world, insights on certain behavior domains remain limited, including those on taxcompliance among domestic versus foreign taxpayers. Our meta-st...

In this chapter, we ask (conceptually and methodologically) what exactly isbehavioural economics and what are its roots? And further, what may we have missed along the way? We argue that revisiting “classical” behavioural economics conc...

Sporting events can be seen as controlled, real-world, miniature laboratory environments, approaching the idea of “holding other things equal” when exploring the implications of decisions, incentives, and constraints in a competitive se...

Corruption literature within economics has long returned ambiguous results with no concisecause or impact of corruption identified. This meta-analysis aims to find synergy within the corruption literature by assessing macroeconomic empirica...

Self-confidence has long been regarded as one of the key qualities in determining entrepreneurialsuccess. In markets with uncertainty, like crowdfunding, entrepreneurial confidence is an important signal that lowers the information imbalanc...

AI and Big Data provide opportunities and challenges with respect to howwe achieve safety in livable smart cities. In this contribution, we look at set of aspects that are important at the city level; namely, how urban analytics and digital...

Despite a solid foundation of women’s career progression research, the role of personality andpsychosocial characteristics in explaining objective career success is not yet fully understood. Structural underrepresentation of female execut...

This paper begins with a discussion on James Buchanan’s suggestion to replace theword “economics” with “symbiotics”, viewing human behavior through the window of exchange rather than choice. Although our current textbooks – such...

Despite the great promises and potential of quantum computing, the fullrange of possibilities and practical applications is not yet clear. In this contribution, we highlight the potential for quantum theories and computation to reignite the...

As the severity and frequency of natural disasters become more pronounced withclimate change and the increased habitation of at-risk areas, it is important to understand people’s resilience to them. We quantify resilience by estimating ho...

The QAnon conspiracy theory contends, among other things, that COVID-19 is a conspiracyorchestrated by powerful actors and aimed at repressing civil liberties. We hypothesize that, where government risk communication started early, as measu...

The recent acceleration and ongoing development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its related (and/orenabling) digital technologies presents new challenges and considerable opportunity on which businesses and individuals may capitalise. I...

Beauty has been used as a fast and frugal heuristic, and therefore an important determinantof choice, as highlighted in research by Hamermesh. In a world of asymmetric information, beauty represents a proxy for objective characteristics or ...

Despite the potential importance of awards as a possible career catalyst, the theoretical andempirical research on awards is still in its infancy. Here, we address this notable shortcoming in the economic literature by exploring data from G...

The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted scientists from different fields to evaluate whether the use of immunity certificates would allow for a safer and faster return to normality. This policy has been recently implemen...

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment designed specifically to test the influence of nationalpride on tax honesty while using a physiological marker to observe emotional responses to patriotic priming. Participants were exposed to o...

For football executives, understanding the determinants of spectator no-showbehavior better is of utmost importance. Recent research efforts, however, have primarily focused on exploring the potential effects of determinants that the club m...

In this paper I discuss how Law and Economics can benefit from incorporatingsome insights from Public Choice into their analyses. Within this argument, I examine the evolution of experimental methods by looking at laboratory, field, and nat...

We designed and implemented a survey to capture what scientists from around the world think about immunity certification. Responses from 12,738 scientists were captured and their distribution was tabulated by participants in health science ...

We conducted a framed field experiment to explore a situation where individuals have potentiallycompeting social identities to understand how group identification and socialization affect in- group favoritism and out-group discrimination. T...

Increasing the tax compliance of self-employed business owners (particularly of trade-specific service providers) remains an ongoing challenge for tax authorities. From a compliance point of view, cash transactions are particularly problema...

Because no-show behavior typically leads to operational inefficiencies and thus diminishingreturns for service firms, a growing number of authors have demonstrated the potential of using reminders to reduce no-show rates. In this study, by ...

In this contribution, we highlight the potential for quantum theories toreignite the art and science of expert systems and knowledge engineering. With their fundamental grounding in uncertainty and unpredictability, quantum concepts are abl...

The current coronavirus pandemic has had far-reaching global effects on thehealth and wellbeing of individuals across each and every continent of the world. The economic and financial market response has been equally disastrous and turbulen...

Because the use of p-values in statistical inference often involves the rejection of a hypothesis on thebasis of a number that itself assumes the hypothesis to be true, many in the scientific community argue that inference should instead be...

In this article, we argue for application of the Human Factors Analysis and ClassificationSystem (HFACS) to proactive incidence prevention in the public health system response to COVID-19. HFACS is a framework of causal categories of human ...

This paper examines the effects of globalisation on the pace of governments implementing internationaltravel restrictions during the recent coronavirus pandemic. We find that more globalised countries experienced a longer delay in implement...

Trust in the health care system requires being confident that suffic ient and appropriatetreatments will be provided if needed. The CO VID-19 public health crisis is a significant, global, and (mostly) simultaneous test of the behav ioral i...

In March 2020, the second ballot of local elections in the German state of Bavaria was held under an official state of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Bavarian mayors are elected by majority rule in two-round (runoff) elections. Bet...

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a global exogenous shock, impactingindividuals’ decision making and behavi our allowing researchers to test theories of personality by exploring how traits, in conjunction with individual and societal diff...

Although science has been an incredibly pow erful and revolutionary force, it is notclear whether science is suited to perf ormance under pressure; generally, science achieves best in its usual comfort zone of patience, caution, and slownes...

Behavioural responses to pandemics are less shaped by actual mortality or hospitalization risksthan they are by risk attitudes. We explore human mobility patterns as a measure of behavioural responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our resul...

In the midst of the COVID‐19 pandemic currently affecting every corner of the globe, there is a critical need for understanding and mapping human movement in order to formulateappropriate scientific and policy responses. To this end, we p...

A pandemic is not only a biological event and a public health disaster, but it alsogenerates impacts that are worth understan ding from a societal, historical, and cultural perspective. In this contribution, we argue that as the disease spr...

Using World Values Survey data, we show that individuals whose primary language usesthe same word for (financial) debt and (moral) guilt have a statistically significant and economically relevant lower probability of borrowing money. This r...

By examining discrepancies between officially reported GDP growth figures andthe actual economic growth implied by satellite-based night time light (NTL) density, we investigate whether democracies manipulate officially reported GDP figures...

As the public debate over stem cell research continues, the observable voting behaviour in Switzerland offers a unique opportunity to compare the voting behaviour of politicians with that of voters. In this paper, by analysing the outcomes ...

We investigate whether Nobel laureates’ collaborative activities undergo a negative changefollowing prize reception by using publication records of 198 Nobel laureates and analyzing their coauthorship patterns before and after the Nobel P...

Although tax non-filing and the resulting tax evasion are a challenge to public welfare of developingcountries, scholarly knowledge on the subject is minimal. The present paper compares rich self- employed identified as non-filers with a ra...

This study uses the case of professional soccer to investigate the determinants of human capital (HC)specificity. Inspired by labor market research, we formulate three hypotheses on how uncertainty about the usefulness of individuals’ (mo...

To explore the effects of daylights saving time (DST) transition on cognitive performance and risk-taking behaviour immediately before and one week after the shift to DST, this study examines two Australian populations living in similar geo...

Despite much in-depth investigation of factors influencing this evolution invarious scientific fields, our knowledge about how efficiency or creativity is linked to the longevity of collaborative relationships remains very limited. We explo...

This study uses a real case from professional soccer to examine intertemporal ratingerrors in performance appraisals. Motivated by research that extends the (prospective) optimistic bias and (retrospective) positivity bias to others, we for...

Many prior studies suggest that alphabetic ordering confers professionaladvantages on authors with earlier surname initials. However, these studies assume that authors select into coauthorships without regard to the incentives identified. W...

The external influence of scholarly activity has to date been measured primarily in terms ofpublications and citations, metrics that also dominate the promotion and grant processes. Yet the array of scholarly activities visible to the outsi...

Volunteering is a dominant social force that signals a healthy state. However, although the literature onvolunteering is extensive, knowledge on how life’s discontinuities (life event shocks) affect volunteering is limited because most st...

This article introduces the Fogs Artie program that attempts to close the gap ineducational attainment between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and provides an evaluation of its effectiveness. The program is of special interest as...

Historically, tax compliance has been a highly interdisciplinary avenue ofresearch to which economics, psychology, law, sociology, history, political science, and accountancy have made valuable contributions. It is less well understood, how...

Despite extensive literature on female mate choice, empirical evidenceon women’s preferences in the search for a sperm donor is scarce, even though this search, by isolating a male’s genetic impact on offspring from other factors like p...

This paper constitutes a unique micro-level exploration of the relation between gameoutcome uncertainty and the behavior of highly committed season ticket holders of a major Bundesliga soccer team. Specifically, we look at 3,113 season tick...

In Switzerland, two key church institutions - the Conference of Swiss Bishops(CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) - make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to dire...

We examine the nature of stated subjective probabilities in a complex, evolving context in which true event probabilities are not withinsubjects' explicit information set. Specifically, we collect information on subjective expectations in a...

External prominence (measured by the number of pages indexed on search engines or TED talk invitations) canbe capitalized on the speakers' market while research performance (measured by publication and citation indicators) cannot. There is ...

The external influence of scholarly activity has to date been measured primarily interms of publications and citations, metrics that also dominate the promotion and grant processes. Yet the array of scholarly activities visible to the outsi...

The tax compliance literature has mainly focused on individual tax evasionrather than firm tax evasion. In general, there is a lack of field experiments on the topic, and measuring tax compliance is challenging. To address this shortcoming ...

In this paper, we analyze the effects of religious identity – defined both as personalidentification with a religious tradition and institutional ideas on the provision of public goods – on attitudes toward central government. We explor...

Nobel laureates have achieved the highest recognition in academia, reaching the boundaries ofhuman knowledge and understanding. Owing to past research, we have a good understanding of the career patterns behind their performance. Yet, we ha...

This study explores whether awards breed further awards and what happens after a researcher receivesthe Nobel Prize. We therefore collected data on all the 1901 to 1980 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine or physiology, looki...

Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largelydisregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether a specific, yet important, award in economics, the John Bates Clark Medal, raises recipients? subs...

We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal effect ofexit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after the election result ha...

We explore the attitude towards risky career choices of young people in highly competitive environments.We empirically test which factors influence young elite athletes' tendency towards choosing a high-risk career option over a lower risk ...

Although paying taxes is a key element in a well-functioning civilized society, theunderstanding of why people pay taxes is still limited. What current evidence shows is that, given relatively low audit probabilities and penalties in case o...

This paper examines the effect of superstars on external stakeholders’organizational identification through the lens of sport. Drawing on social identity theory and the concept of organizational identification, as well as on role model th...

Using life cycle publication data of 9,368 economics PhD graduates from 127 U.S. institutions,we investigate how unemployment in the U.S. economy prior to starting graduate studies and at the time of entry into the academic job market affec...

Unrealistic optimism is a commonly observed bias in the perception ofchances. In this paper, we examine whether the bias is also present among young elite soccer players (10 to 23 years old) who receive regular objective feedback through ex...

An academic award is method by which peers offer recognition of intellectualefforts. In this paper we take a purely descriptive look at the relationship between becoming a Fellow of the Econometric Society and receiving the Nobel Prize in e...

In this study of the persistent social phenomenon of suicide, we find that eventhough theological and social differences between Catholicism and Protestantism have decreased, Catholics are still less likely than Protestants to commit or acc...

Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period(1848-2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held o...

This study explores people's risk attitudes after having suffered largereal-world losses following a natural disaster. Using the margins of the 2011 Australian oods (Brisbane) as a natural experimental setting, we find that homeowners who w...

Field experiments in the area of tax compliance are rare. This field experiment generates aunique data set with respect to individuals’ under-declaration of income and wealth and over-deductions of tax credits by obtaining exclusive full ...

This study investigates the citation patterns of theoretical and empirical papers over a period of almost 30 years,while also exploring the determinants of citation success. The results indicate that empirical papers attract more citation s...

Algan and Cahuc in "Inherited Trust and Growth" (AER, 2010) argue that "inherited trust"is a key factor in explaining growth rates across countries. They derive a measure of inherited trust by linking respondents’ "home countries" in the ...

This paper analyses synchronization in business cycles across the European Union (EU) since 1989.We include both old and new European Union members and countries which are currently negotiating accession, as well as potential European Union...

The paper reports on work values in Europe. At the country levelwe find that job satisfaction is related to lower working hours, higher well-being, and a higher GDP per capita. Moving to the micro level, we turn our attention from job satis...

This paper analyses co-movements in a wide group of commodity prices during the time period 1992-2010.Our methodological approach is based on the correlation matrix and the networks inside. Through this approach we are able to summarize glo...

Analysing emotional states under duress or during heightened, life-and-death situations is extremely difficult,especially given the inability of laboratory experiments to adequately replicate the environment and the inherent biases of post ...

Liberal drug policy reform is often criticized for ‘sending the wrong message’, particularlyto youth. Reform opponents argue that liberal policies such as decriminalisation and medical marijuana laws will cause marijuana to be perceived...

This paper investigates the business cycle co-movement across countries andregions since the middle of the last century as a measure for quantifying the ongoing globalization process of the world economy. Our methodological approach is base...

Using information collected from American Economic Review publicationsof the last 100 years, we try to provide answers to various questions: Which are the top AER publishing institutions and countries? Which are the top AER papers based on ...

20 years ago, William Baumol provided an interesting wish list that outlined his hopes forthe future of economics over the next hundred years. Impatiently, this paper puts his wish list to the test by comparing the characteristics of public...

Baron von Richthofen (the Red Baron) arguably the most famous fighter pilot of all time paintedhis plane the vividest of red hues, making it visible and identifiable at great distance, showing an aggressive pronouncement of dominance to oth...

This paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence on the nexus betweencorruption and democracy. We establish a political economy model where the effect of democracy on corruption is conditional on income distribution and property right...

We explore theoretically and empirically whether social interaction,including local and global interaction, influences the incidence of corruption. We first present an interaction-based model on corruption that predicts that the level of co...

In this study we explore in detail the causes of corruption in China using two different sets of data atthe regional level (provinces and cities). We observe that regions with more anti-corruption efforts, histories of British rule, higher ...

With complementary Chinese data sets and alternative corruption measures, we explore theconsequences of corruption. Adopting a novel approach we provide evidence that corruption can have both, positive and negative effects, on economic deve...

What happens if national legal laws or enforcements and social norms are no longer able to directlyregulate individual behaviour? According to our knowledge, not much empirical evidence has emerged answering such a seemingly simple question...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of police officersÕ willingnessto quit their current department. For this purpose, we work with US survey data that covers a large set of police officers of the Baltimore Police ...

This paper analyses the effect of gender on reported and perceived levels of stress throughexamination of both the physical and psychological indicators. It may be interesting to work with police data due to high stress levels among police ...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social capital in reducing the negative externalities associated with stress,as well as the physical and psychological indicators of stress among police officers. Despite the fact that there is a lar...

There is a notable shortage of empirical research directed at measuring the magnitude anddirection of stress effects on performance in a controlled environment. One reason for this is the inherent difficulties in identifying and isolating d...

We study the broken windows theory with a field experiment in a shared area of a workplace inacademia (department common room). We explore academics' and postgraduate students' behaviour under an order condition (clean environment) and a di...

This paper investigates spatial spillovers in local spending decisions between the center and the surrounding local communities by using panel data of the canton of Lucerne during the 1990s. Due to the geographical fragmentation with a majo...

This comment makes a contribution to Becker and Woessmann?s paper on a human capital theory of Protestant economic history eventually challenging the famous thesis by Max Weber who attributed economic success to a specific Protestant work e...

The billionaires of the world attract significant attention from the media and the public. The popular press is full of books selling formulas on how to become rich. Surprisingly, only a limited number of studies have explored empirically t...

The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 took the lives of 68 percent of the people aboard. Who survived? It was women and children who had a higher probability of being saved, not men. Likewise, people traveling in first class had a better...

We argue that the decision to bribe bureaucrats depends on the frequency of corruption within a society. We provide a behavioral model to explain this conduct: engaging in corruption results in a disutility of guilt. This implies that peopl...

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. Rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using panel data covering more than 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition...

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is also a bottom-up approach such as, for example, decentralizing the political power to those who are close to ...

The risk of external interventions crowding-out intrinsic motivation has long been established in economics. This paper introduces a new dimension by arguing that a crowding-out effect does become possible if individuals receive higher rela...

This paper explored the determinants of survival in a life and death situation created by an external and unpredictable shock. We are interested to see whether pro-social behaviour matters in such extreme situations. We therefore focus on t...

We explore whether environmental motivation affects environmental behavior by focusing on volunteering. The paper first introduces a theoretical model of volunteering in environmental organizations. In a next step, it tests the hypothesis w...

The experimental literature and studies using survey data have established that people care a great deal about their relative economic position and not solely, as standard economic theory assumes, about their absolute economic position. Ind...

It is generally understood that people care about their absolute income position, and several studies have in fact moved beyond this, showing that people also place considerable signifcance on their relative income position. However, empiri...

Do employees care about their relative (economic) position among co-workers in an organization? And if so, does it raise or lower their performance? Behavioral evidence on these important questions is rare. This paper takes a novel approach...

The experimental literature and studies using survey data have established that people care a great deal about their relative economic position and not solely, as standard economic theory assumes, about their absolute economic position. Ind...

The paper explores whether a social learning model helps explain the observed conformity and compliance with social norms after the unification of Germany. We compare tax morale, (the willingness to pay taxes), between inhabitants of East a...

The paper investigates the relationship between environmental participation and littering. Previous empirical work in the area of littering is scarce as is evidence regarding the determinants of littering behavior. We address these deficien...

People care a great deal about their relative economic position and not solely about their absolute economic position. However, behavioral evidence is rare. This paper provides evidence on how the relative income position affects profession...

In recent years the topic of corruption has attracted a great deal of attention. However, there is still a lack of empirical evidence about the determinants of corruption at the micro level. Therefore we explore in detail the impact of poli...

The paper investigates empirically the differences in preferences towards protection of the environment. Using seven different dependent variables to focus on the impact of age, gender and children we use a large micro data set covering dat...

Taxpayers are more compliant than the traditional economic models predict. Why? The literature calls it the ?puzzle of tax compliance?. In this paper we use field, experimental and survey data to investigate the empirical evidence on whethe...

This paper turns Snow-White?s magic mirror onto recent economics Nobel Prize winners, top economists and happiness researchers, and through the eyes of the ?man in the street? seeks to determine who the happiest academic is. The study not o...

In this paper we argue that a more legitimate and responsive state is an essential factor for a more adequate level of tax effort in developing countries. While at first glance giving such advice to poor countries seeking to increase their ...

Many taxpayers truthfully declare their income to the tax administration. Why? In this paper we have found a significant correlation between tax morale and tax evasion, controlling a variety of factors. Furthermore we have analysed tax mora...

The paper investigates the relationship between pro-social norms and its implications for improved environmental outcomes, an area which has been neglected in the environmental economics literature. We provide empirical evidence, demonstrat...

Research evidence on the impact of relative income position on individuals? attitudes and behaviour is sorely lacking. Therefore, using the International Social Survey Programme 1998 data from 26 countries this paper investigates the impact...

Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is also a bottom-up approach: decentralizing the political power to those who are close to the problems and give...

This paper provides a comparison of tax morale between inhabitants of East and West Germany in its post-reunification period, using three World Values Survey/European Values Survey waves between 1990 and 1999. The setting of German reunific...

This paper analyses how governance or institutional quality and tax morale affect the shadow economy, using an international country panel and also within country data. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these...

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries? institutional quality affect the shadow economy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of ...

Relative income differences are likely to lead to envy within a reference group. Envy in turn influences social behavior and on individual performance. While positional concerns are apparent in daily life, empirical evidence is rare in the ...

This paper investigates the relative impact of regional energy production on the legislative choices of Russian Duma deputies on energy regulation between 1994 and 2003. We apply Poole?s optimal classification method of roll call votes usin...

The literature on social capital has strongly increased in the last two decades, but, there still is a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of trust. Most studies have focused on social or generalized trust, while t...

Many studies have established that people care a great deal about their relative economic position and not solely, as standard economic theory assumes, about their absolute economic position. However, behavioral evidence is rare. This paper...

This paper analyzes the impact of rewards on tax compliance as an additional instrument to take into account. While social psychologists and neuroscientists have emphasized the importance of rewards, the tax compliance literature has strong...

In recent years the topics of illegal activities such as corruption or tax evasion have attracted a great deal of attention. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of compliance. The aim of t...

The literature on volunteering has strongly increased in the last few years. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of environmental participation. This empirical study analyses a cross-secti...

Why so many people pay their taxes, although fines and audit probability are low, has become a central question in the tax compliance literature. A homo economicus, with a more refined motivation structure, helps us to shed light on this pu...

This paper investigates the role of the State Duma of Russia in energy regulation between 1994 and 2003. We applying Poole?s optimal classification model of roll call votes using an ordered probit model to show impact of partisan, bureaucra...

The literature on volunteering has strongly increased in the last few years. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of environmental participation. This empirical study analyses a cross-secti...

Research evidence on the impact of relative income position on individual attitudes and behaviour is sorely lacking. Therefore, this paper assesses such positional impact on social capital by applying 14 different measurements to Internatio...

Many studies have established that people care a great deal about their relative economic position and not solely, as standard economic theory assumes, about their absolute economic position. However, behavioral evidence is rare. This paper...

This paper studies the evolutions of tax morale in Spain in the post-Franco era. Tax morale, defined as the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes, might be a key determinant of the actual degree of tax compliance in a country. But despite its p...

ax morale has received a growing attention in academics as well as in public life. The relevance of tax morale for fiscal policy cannot be neglected as tax morale can help to explain the level of tax compliance or tax evasion. This paper gi...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts can increase tax compliance. However, there must be other forces at work because observed compliance levels cannot be fully explained by the level of enforcement actions typical of mos...

The intention of this paper is to analyse how audit courts and local autonomy affect political discussion, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a broad variety of potential factors focusing on Switzerland, due to its variety of audit ...

This paper examines citizens? attitudes toward paying taxes ? what is sometimes termed their ?tax morale?, or the intrinsic motivation to pay taxes ? focusing on the experience of individuals in the Russian Federation. A unique aspect of ou...

In this paper we investigate the pay-performance relationship of soccer players using individual data from eight seasons of the German soccer league Bundesliga. The results of our panel analysis show that not only the absolute income level,...

Do people prefer a society with an extensive social welfare system with high taxes, or low taxes but lax redistributive policies? Although economists have for a long time investigated the trade-off mechanism between equity and efficiency, s...

Since the 70s, an increasing number of studies investigating environmental preferences have been made. However, papers related to a country and its regions or its development over time are still largely lacking, although it is a promising l...

Citizens are willing to abandon their short-term financial interest in free-riding considerably, if governments act in their interest, if procedures of the public decisions-making process are felt to be fair and if other fellow-citizens hav...

This paper analyses fiscal autonomy in Germany. First, it provides an overview of fiscal autonomy. What is novel in this paper compared to previous studies is the development of a fiscal autonomy coefficient for the states, based on communa...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance. To resolve this puzzle of tax compliance, many researchers have argued that citizens? attitudes toward paying taxes or tax moral...

People mostly pay their taxes although there is a low probability of getting caught and being penalized. Thus, new attempts in the tax compliance literature try to go beyond standard economic theory. This paper examines citizens? attitudes ...

In recent years the topic of corruption has attracted a great deal of attention. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of corruption. This empirical study analyses a cross-section of individ...

Cycling has not been analyzed intensively in the economics of sports literature. This paper reports empirical evidence of individuals? performances in the 2004 ?Tour de France?. We investigate different performances such as total ranking, m...

Why so many people pay their taxes, although fines and audit probability are low, has become a central question in the tax compliance literature. Concepts of Homo Economicus, endowed with a more refined motivation structure, help to shed li...

The expansion of economics to ?non-market topics? such as football has received increased attention in recent years. However, most of the studies focus on men?s performances, whereas this paper reports empirical evidence of women?s internat...

Most of the football papers that measure the international performances focus on the ranking system provided by the FIFA. Surprisingly, the World Cup per se has not been analyzed intensively. This paper as a novelty reports empirical eviden...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance. Previous studies have found differences in compliance behaviour across cultures. Novel in this paper is to investigate the impac...

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the relationship between government size and economic growth. But the empirical evidence of growth effects of public expenditure using cross-country regres-sions is still inconclusive. Acco...

In recent years much research has investigated whether values, social norms, and attitudes differ across countries and whether these differences have measurable effects on economic behavior. One area in which such studies are particularly r...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts can increase tax compliance. However, there must be other forces at work because observed compliance levels cannot be fully explained by the level of enforcement actions typical of mos...

The intention of this paper is to analyse how audit courts affect tax morale, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a broad variety of potential factors. Switzerland with its variety of audit court competences among the cantons has bee...

This paper analyses tax morale in transition countries. Tax morale has been used as dependent variable working with World Values Survey and European Values data for different years (1990-2000). The results suggest that trust, measured as tr...

Why citizens pay their taxes voluntarily is an important question for tax administrations worldwide. Some believe it is because taxpayers are deterred from tax evasion out of a fear of being caught or penalised. Others, in contrast, suggest...

This paper analyses tax morale in several Asian countries. The descriptive analysis indicates that tax morale is very low in the Philippines and relatively high in Japan, China, and Bangladesh. In general Asia has a higher tax morale than O...

In a controlled field experiment in Switzerland this paper analyses the effects of moral suasion on the timely paying and filling out of the tax form 2001, and the honesty regarding the declaration of domestic income from capital gains, lot...

This paper has a novel framework analysing what shapes superstition in a multivariate analysis. The results indicate that socio-demographic and socio-economic variables matter. The results also indicate that there is a certain concurrence b...

This paper analyses the impact of direct democracy, trust in government, the court and the legal system, and federalism on tax morale. In the tax compliance literature it is novel to analyse tax morale as dependent variable and to systemati...

The intention of this paper is to analyze religiosity as a factor that potentially affects tax morale. For this purpose, a multivariate analysis has been done with data from the World Values Survey 1995- 1997, covering more than thirty coun...