Contributions in Merlin

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.

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.

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We use the modified Black-Scholes model and a random variance option pricing model tostudy prices of European currency options traded in Geneva. The options, which cannot be exercised early, include calls and puts on the dollar/Swiss franc exchange rate. In the empirical analysis, we examine the model fit and the biases with respect to the strike price, time to maturity, and volatility. There is some evidence of mispricing and there are small gains available by trading with the random variance model.