Michael W. Spicer

Tax evasion and heuristics: A research note

Abstract The paper examines the heuristics which taxpayers use in making tax evasion decisions. The following propositions are tested in an experiment using students. First, the taxpapers own level of evasion will be positively related to what he perceives as the levels of evasion by others. Second, taxpayers who have been audited are more likely to assess the probability of audit as higher and therefore decrease their levels of evasion. The experimental results fail to support the first proposition but do support the second suggesting the presence of an ‘availability’ effect.

Audit Probabilities and the Tax Evasion Decision: An Experimental Approach

In this study, an attempt is made to examine the nature of the relationship between the probabilities of a tax audit and the tax evasion decision using an experimental approach. While a number of survey studies have reported negative correlations between the perceived audit probability and tax evasion (Spicer and Lundstedt 1976; Mason and Calvin 1978) such correlations do not provide unambiguous evidence of a causal relationship. The experimental approach to studying tax evasion allows for greater control over the introduction of independent variables than is possible in survey research and hence permits a clearer demonstration of causal relationships. Also, by studying tax evasion behavior in a laboratory setting rather than real world evasion, the experimental approach circumvents the problem of how to obtain from individuals honest responses on behavior that is illegal and to some extent socially undesirable. The obvious shortcoming of the approach lies in the artificiality of the laboratory setting which may make it more difficult to generalize results to tax evasion in the real world. Nonetheless, social psychologists, such as Thibaut et al. (1974), have made use of games and simulations in studying compliance with rules. Also, the experimental approach to studying tax evasion has been taken by Friedland et al. ( 1978) and by Spicer and Becker (1980). Friedland et al. found that large fines may be more effective deterrents than frequent

Value Pluralism and Its Implications for American Public Administration

Abstract This article discusses the idea of value pluralism and its implications for American public administration in dealing with value conflicts. It is argued here that the pluralist view that our values are often incompatible and incommensurable with one another is more coherent with our moral experience than monist views that assume an underlying harmony among human ends. I also argue that the monist character of much of public administration discourse, by ignoring this moral experience, constrains the ability of public administration as a field to assist practitioners in dealing with value conflicts and may risk promoting an excessive zeal among practitioners in pursuing their own monist ends. A constitutionalist approach to public administration is proposed here, which seeks, by means of a combination of administrative independence and juridic ism, to constrain the ability of political and administrative power to limit the range of values considered in discourse. Finally, the relationship between value pluralism and anti-administration is examined.

A Public Choice Approach to Motivating People in Bureaucratic Organizations

This paper examines the problem of motivating people in organizations from a public choice viewpoint. A number of propositions are derived deductively from assumptions regarding individual goals, discretion, and preferences. These suggest how managers can improve productivity by changing either incentive systems or work group size, job design, and personnel rotation practices. Public choice is the application of economic analysis to the study of political behavior. Within public administration, public choice has formed a theoretical basis for a critique of government bureaucracy and for an examination of market and quasi-market mechanisms for the delivery of public services, including privatization, voucher schemes, contracting out, and competing bureaucracies. This growing body of research has been reviewed by Straussman (1981) and Weschler (1982). Little attempt, however, has been made to apply public choice methodology to the problems facing those who must manage people in large bureaucratic organizations. This is surprising because a central concern of public choice focuses on how rational individuals cooperate to

Public Administration Enquiry and Social Science in The Postmodern Condition: Some Implications of Value Pluralism

This paper examines the relationship between publiic administration and social science in light of the postmodern condition. It is argued here that the postmodern condition limits the role of conventional social science in public administration because it increases the incidence, as well as the visibility, of conflict between incompatible and incommensurable human ends or values. While conventional social science can still make a useful contribution to public administration enquiry, as an expression of certain important values, other modes of enquiry, including philosophy and history, are also important in helping us to become more self-conscious about the political and ethical values that we express in public administration discourse and practice and the conflicts that can occur between them.

Aristotelian Rhetoric, Pluralism, and Public Administration

This article discusses how Aristotle’s thought on rhetoric can help public administrators deal with situations that involve conflicting and irreconcilable values. We argue that Aristotelian rhetoric can be helpful to public administrators in dealing with value conflicts, because it promotes a greater self-consciousness among administrators about their own values, encourages them to seek ways of accommodating their values to the values of others, discourages any sense of finality in resolving value conflicts, and requires that administrators take account of the concrete specifics of particular practical situations in dealing with value conflicts.

Value Conflict and Legal Reasoning in Public Administration

This article explores the idea of value pluralism, the problems it poses for public administration, and how an examination of legal reasoning, as a form of practical reasoning, might help public administrators deal with these problems. It is argued that legal reasoning can be helpful because it is rooted in a process of adversary argument and analogical reasoning that promotes the consideration of conflicting values or conceptions of the good.

Evaluating Parental Choice in Public Education: Policy beyond the Monopoly Model

In this article we develop an economic model of the provision of educational services in a metropolitan area that accounts for the number of school districts and the ability of significant numbers of families to relocate. We then use the results to evaluate the current system of public education and alternative proposals for reform. Each is evaluated in terms of its efficacy in promoting efficiency and equity goals and its ability to inculcate common social values. We argue that, compared to the current system, voucher programs will not necessarily promote efficiency and also will tend to increase racial and social segregation. Minischools and competitive contracting-out schemes, in contrast, may be able to improve efficiency without adverse equity consequences and may aid in the promotion of common social values.

The History of Ideas and Normative Research in Public Administration: Some Personal Reflections

This paper discusses the history of ideas as a methodological approach to normative research in public administration. It seeks to explore what the history of ideas entails, why our field has neglected it, and why, despite this neglect, this approach to normative research is useful. I argue here that an awareness of the history of the ideas and concepts that we use in thinking, talking, and writing about, as well as practicing, public administration can be helpful in avoiding the recycling of old ideas that have been tried in the past and found wanting. Equally important, it can also help us to avoid adopting ideas that are actually destructive of values that we hold dear and suggest ideas that are more coherent with these values.

Public Administration, the State, and the Postmodern Condition

This article examines the vision of the state as a purposive association, which undergirds much of the public administration literature, and explores its suitability in light of the postmodern condition. It is argued that a vision of purposive association is inappropriate and dangerous, given the diversity of political subcultures and language games characteristic of postmodernity, and that a more useful vision of the state here is that of a state as a civil association. The linkages between this latter vision and our constitutional tradition are explored and implications are drawn for the study of public administration.