Contributions published at Department of Economics (Florian Scheuer)

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Abstimmungen als Mittel zur Entscheidungsfindung sind heute sehr verbreitet. Dass Abstimmungsergebnisse (aus logisch zwingenden Gründen) nicht in jedem Fall rational sein müssen, ist hingegen wenig bekannt. Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt an Hand theoretischer Berechnungen und praktischer Fallbeispiele aus der schweizerischen Politik, dass irrationale, sogenannt paradoxe Entscheide durchaus wahrscheinlich sind. Zudem wird dargelegt, welche zusätzlichen Entscheidungsregeln nötig wären, damit eine rationale, nicht manipulierbare Entscheidungsfindung im Kollektiv gewährleistet ist. Aus dem Inhalt: Die Paradox-Wahrscheinlichkeit in der Literatur - Eigene, weiterführende Berechnungen in einem verallgemeinerten Modell - Fallbeispiele aus National- und Ständerat - Die paradoxbehindernde Wirkung von Abstimmungsregeln.

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In the present paper we give new formulas for a general solution of the linear difference equation of finite order with constant complex coefficients without necessity of solving the characteristic equation.

It is proved that for public goods with zero income effects (also called Ziff public goods) tax evasion does not affect the optimal level of public expenditure. Further examples show that, in general, tax evasion may lead to less but also to more public expenditure.

A new parametric model for the econometric analysis of non-negative integers is proposed. Its distinguishing feature is that it allows for more flexible variance-mean relationships than the models used hitherto. Estimation with maximum likelihood is illustrated using a dataset on ship damage incidents.

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This paper proposes to offer the taxpayer a choice of tax-enforcement schemes for self-selection. More specifically, the taxpayer should have the possibility of opting for the prevailing regime with a certain penalty on the evaded tax or for an alternative regime with a higher penalty on the evaded tax but a reduced tax rate. It is shown that this leads to a separation of taxpayers characterized by a relatively high degree of evasion (H-evaders) from taxpayers who evade only a relatively small amount of tax (L-evaders). Furthermore, the procedure is not self-defeating, it is effectively possible to direct the efforts of auditing towards the H-evaders. At the end of the game the L-evaders experience a welfare gain, the H-evaders are induced to reduce their evasion activities and the government can expect higher yields.

The theoretical analysis of tax evasion has typically concentrated on the role of Abstract penalties and on the probability of being investigated and penalized. This article introduces into the standard model of tax evasion the possibility of pecuniary rewards as an economic incentive for taxpaying. The analysis shows that introducing a reward for payment of taxes leads to a welfare improvement over non-prohibitive penalty regimes. An optimal penalty-reward mix is derived that guarantees a certain tax yield for the government and, at the same time, maximizes the taxpayer's utility.

Variations in cost and demand do not have symmetrical impact on the optimal price of the imperfectly competitive firm. This asymmetry is not so important as long as information regarding both cost and demand is sufficient. However, it becomes crucially important in case of incomplete information. Usually firms have more complete or ‘harder’ information on cost than on demand. This difference in information status on the cost and on the demand side can explain both cost-based pricing and slow price adjustment to demand in an optimizing framework with Bayesian learning about changed demand conditions.