Carla Marchese

Taxpayers' Attitudes Toward Risk and Amnesty Participation: Economic Analysis and Evidence for the Italian Case

This paper provides a simple model, based on expected utility theory, for rationalizing taxpayers reaction to an unexpected amnesty offer. The model is estimated through a deterministic approach, with reference to data pertaining to the 1991 and 1994 Italian tax amnesties. Results seem sound and suggest that standard critiques to the use of expected utility theory for describing taxpayer behavior do not apply when participation in amnesties is considered. However, the model fails in explaining the behavior of full compliers (who refuse the amnesty). Their behavior can be better rationalized by resorting to the expected utility with rank dependent probability approach.

Agent's liability versus principal's liability when attitudes toward risk differ

This paper studies through an agency model the problem of concealing an illegal activity which benefits the principal. The agent can exert an effort that negatively affects the likelihood of detection. We model such behavior with the assumption that the principal is risk neutral while the agent is risk averse. Two opposite legal regimes are considered: in the first, only the principal is strictly liable; in the second, only the agent is. We show that shifting the liability upon the agent, while the monetary sanction and the probability of detection are kept constant, reduces the principals net benefit, thus favoring deterrence of wrongdoing. However, the agents effort in cheating can either increase or decrease. 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.

Taxation, Black Markets, and Other Unintended Consequences

The economics of tax evasion and tax avoidance is shortly presented, and the relevant literature is surveyed. Starting from the income tax and the standard portfolio choice model, the perspective is enlarged by adding further circumstances (e.g., labor supply, indirect taxation) and by studying optimal enforcement policies. To understand the taxpayer’s behavior, the contribution of new theoretical perspectives (e.g., first order risk aversion, network externalities) is examined. Topics pertaining to moral, social and political implications of tax evasion are considered.

Tax Amnesty as Price-Discriminating Behavior by a Monopolistic Government

We consider perfectly anticipated periodic tax amnesties characterized by a tax rate lower than the ordinary one and used by a monopolistic government to maximize net fiscal revenue. We model tax amnesties as a form of intertemporal price discrimination. It turns out that, under certain conditions, discrimination secures the highest net revenue, as amnesties incorporate a self-selection mechanism that renders it possible to collect additional payments from tax evaders, without inducing honest taxpayers to join them. Optimal timing for granting tax amnesties may be calculated, but problems of time inconsistency in government behavior may arise.

Endogenous Recombinant Growth and Intellectual Property Rights

We show that, even in a framework in which monopolistic exploitation of patents does not occur, patents still give rise to serious drawbacks. We build on Weitzman’s (1998) recombinant growth model which provides a stylized but clear description of the formation of knowledge externalities. In our framework a benevolent government buys immediately new patents in a competitive market and releases their contents for free. We show that inefficiencies nevertheless arise and welfare can be improved by correcting the market price through a tax-subsidy scheme. We characterize the (asymptotic) steady state equilibrium, and some properties of the transitional path. We show that if certain conditions are met, then the economy will converge to its (asymptotic) balanced growth path, and along such a path growth will be independent of the policy parameter; conversely, transition dynamics are affected by the choice of the policy parameter. We then quantitatively analyze the effect of different policy interventions on welfare, and show that stricter tax (weaker appropriability) regimes lead to higher social welfare.

Endogenous Recombinant Growth Through Market Production of Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights

We analyze the relationship between economic growth, knowledge production and intellectual property rights. Economists and historians underline different aspects as possible causes of knowledge accumulation; the former stress the role of incentive mechanisms while the latter the autonomous progress of science. We construct a unified theory allowing for the presence of markets and the autonomous accumulation of knowledge by introducing intellectual property right policies in an endogenous recombinant growth model. In this framework a benevolent government should reallocate resources from the final to the knowledge production sector and implement a tax-subsidy scheme in order to correct for the inefficiencies generated by the process. We characterize the (asymptotic) steady state equilibrium, and some properties of the transitional path. We show that if certain conditions are met, then the economy will converge to its (asymptotic) balanced growth path, and along such a path growth will be independent of the government policy; conversely, transition dynamics and the capital to knowledge ratio are affected by the choice of the tax-subsidy parameter. We then quantitatively analyze the effect of different policy interventions on welfare, and show that welfare is increasing in the policy parameter and a strictly positive policy level may be required to avoid stagnation.

Redistribution and Crime When Agents Have Limited Liability: A Note

Monetary sanctions are less effective when agents cannot afford to pay them in full. We present a simple model of a society with two types of risk averse agents, differing in terms of productivity in the legal labor market. We consider transfers from the most productive to the least productive agents, and discuss the conditions under which redistribution can reduce crime.

Endogenous Economic Growth with Disembodied Knowledge

Mainstream endogenous growth models assume that new knowledge is embodied into new intermediate or final goods, monopolistically supplied by the patent holder. Recent technological progress, however, often gives rise to pure intellectual contents, such as software codes or business models, directly usable in the production of final goods. Once a content of this type has been produced, it is in fixed supply, that is, the inventor can only rent it out (or sell it) or not; hence the quantity restriction typical of monopoly cannot arise, while competition is viable (Chantrel et al., 2012; Marchese and Privileggi, 2014). We show that, however, as long as the inventor owning a patent can control through licence activation devices the access to the intellectual content of the workers using her invention in the final goods production, monopolistic exploitation becomes viable and will occur. It turns out that in this framework both the level of wages and of consumption and the rate of growth of the economy are smaller than in the first best, while with elastic labor supply also labor employment is negatively impacted. This implies that some standard public policies devised for correcting inefficiencies in development can perform poorly in this framework.

Is there any Induced Demand for Tax Evasion

In this paper we consider amoral taxpayers who access amoral tax preparers in order to receive help in evading taxes. Taxpayers are aware of having a biased perception of the audit probability, but are unable to correct such bias without the help of a tax preparer. The market for tax preparation, characterized by imperfect competition, is described according to the conjectural variation approach. We show that according to the direction of the bias the tax preparer can suggest either a larger or a smaller evasion with respect to the one that the taxpayer would have implemented without the advice, resulting in an evasion smaller or larger than that observed in tax reports of unbiased taxpayers. Such ambiguity provides a motivation for the ambivalent attitudes of tax administrations towards tax preparers. It also turns out that sanctions on taxpayers are more effective than sanctions on tax preparers in order to deter tax evasion.

A Competitive Idea-Based Growth Model with Shrinking Workers’ Income Share

In this paper we present a model in which endogenous growth arises in competitive markets. Knowledge is described as a labor-augmenting factor used directly in the Onal goodsiproduction. Firms demand both basic non-rival knowledge contents, which are supplied jointly and inelastically with raw labor, and further contents supplied by patent holders. This fact, together with Lindahl prices for knowledge, allows competition to work, while it also implies that workersiincome share declines overtime. In a Orst version of the model with constant cost of knowledge production the Orst best is attained. In further versions of the model, in which the cost of knowledge production is allowed to change over time and externalities arise, in a decentralized economy a second best equilibrium occurs in the transitional period, while in the long run there is convergence to efficiency.