Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/46349
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3408
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
In a series of experiments conducted in Belgium (Wallonia and Flanders), France and the Netherlands, we compare behavior regarding tax evasion and welfare dodging, with and without information about others' behavior. Subjects have to decide between a 'registered' income, the realization of which will be known to the tax authority for sure, and an 'unregistered' income that will only be known with some probability. This unregistered income comes from self-employment in the Tax treatment and from black labor supplementing some unemployment compensation in the Welfare treatment. Subjects have then to decide on whether reporting their income or not, knowing the risk of detection. The results show that (i) individuals evade more in the Welfare treatment than in the Tax treatment; (ii) many subjects choose an option that allows for tax evasion or welfare fraud but report their income honestly anyway; (iii) examples of low compliance tend to increase tax evasion while examples of high compliance exert no influence; (iv) tax evasion is more frequent in France and the Netherlands; Walloons evade taxes less than the Flemish. There is no cross-country difference in welfare dodging.rformance and provide reliable estimates of the policy model coefficients associated with small central bank losses, in particular during periods of high macroeconomic uncertainty.
Subjects: 
tax evasion
social fraud
social comparisons
cross-country comparisons
experiments
JEL: 
H26
H31
I38
C91
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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