| 1. |
- Andersson, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
-
Nudges and Threats: Soft vs Hard Incentives for Tax Compliance
- 2021
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We study what induces delinquent taxpayers to pay their taxes due. We use high quality administrative data from the Swedish Tax Agency. We find a strong effect of the standard enforcement regime: a threat of having the debt handed over to the Enforcement Agency increases payments by roughly 10 percentage points. When including actual enforcement, payment increases by around 20 percentage points compared to those who do not risk enforcement. In a field experiment, we compare these effects of standard enforcement to those of much milder nudges, consisting of letters reminding tax delinquents to pay their taxes due. We find that a “pure nudge”, i.e., the inclusion of an extra piece of paper with no valuable information, has an effect of 7-8 percentage points for those who do not risk enforcement upon non-payment. However, the same nudge has no detectable effect for the group at risk of enforcement. Social-norm messages in turn increase payments both for those who risk enforcement and for those who do not, but to a much smaller degree. We also find that a pure nudge works much better for those who receive a physical letter than for those who receive information electronically, while the reaction to the social-norm nudge is significant for those who get the electronic information.
|
|
| 2. |
- Andersson, Lina
(författare)
-
Fear and Economic Behavior
- 2022
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fear is an important factor in decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Psychology research suggests that fear influences one’s risk attitude and fear may have important consequences for decisions concerning for example investments, crime, conflicts, and politics. I model strategic interactions between players who can be in either a neutral or a fearful state of mind. A player’s state of mind determines his or her utility function. The two main assumptions are that (i) fear is triggered by an increase in the probability or cost of negative outcomes and (ii) a player in the fearful state is more risk averse. A player’s beliefs over the probability and cost of negative outcomes determine how the player transitions between the states of mind. I use psychological game theory to analyze the role of fear in three applications, a robbery game, a bank run game, and a public health intervention.
|
|
| 3. |
- Andersson, Ola, et al.
(författare)
-
THE INDIVIDUAL WELFARE COSTS OF STAY-AT-HOME POLICIES
- 2020
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper reports the results of a choice experiment designed to estimate the private welfare costs of stay-at-home policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is conducted on a large and representative sample of the Swedish population. The results suggest that the welfare cost of a one-month stay-at-home policy, restricting non-working hours away from home, amounts to 9.1 percent of qSweden's monthly GDP. The cost can be interpreted as 29,600 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which roughly corresponds to between 3,700 and 8,000 COVID-19 fatalities. Moreover, we find that stricter and longer lockdowns are disproportionately more costly than more lenient ones. This result indicates that strict stay-at-home policies are likely to be cost-effective only if they slow the spread of the disease much more than more lenient ones.
|
|
| 4. |
- Anwar, Shamena, et al.
(författare)
-
Unequal Jury Representation and Its Consequences
- 2021
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We analyze the extent and consequences of unequal representation on juries in Harris County, Texas. We first document that residents from predominantly white and high-income neighborhoods are substantially over-represented on juries. Using quasi-random variation in those called for jury duty each day, we next establish that Black defendants are more likely to be convicted and receive longer sentences from juries with more residents from these over-represented neighborhoods. We estimate that equal representation would reduce Black defendants’ median sentence length by 50 percent and the probability of receiving a life sentence by 67 percent. Straightforward remedies could mitigate this severe bias.
|
|
| 5. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
-
Charity, Status, and Optimal Taxation: Welfarist and Non-Welfarist Approaches
- 2021
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper analyzes optimal taxation of charitable giving to a public good in a Mirrleesian framework with social comparisons. Leisure separability together with zero transaction costs of giving imply that charitable giving should be subsidized to such an extent that governmental contributions are completely crowded out, regardless of whether the government acknowledges warm glows of giving. Stronger concerns for relative charitable giving and larger transaction costs support lower marginal subsidies, whereas relative consumption concerns work in the other direction. A dual screening approach, where charitable giving constitutes an indicator of wealth, is also presents. Numerical simulations supplement the theoretical results.
|
|
| 6. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
-
Inequality Aversion, Externalities, and Pareto-Efficient Income Taxation
- 2020
-
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper analyzes Pareto-efficient marginal income taxation taking into account externalities induced through individual inequality aversion, meaning that people have preferences for equality. In doing so, we distinguish between four different and widely used models of inequality aversion. The results show that empirically and experimentally quantified degrees of inequality aversion have potentially very strong implications for Pareto-efficient marginal income taxation. It also turns out that the type of inequality aversion (self-centered vs. non-self-centered), and the specific measures of inequality used, matter a great deal. For example, based on simulation results mimicking the disposable income distribution in the U.S., the preferences suggested by Fehr and Schmidt (1999) imply monotonically increasing marginal income taxes, with large negative marginal tax rates for low-income individuals and large positive marginal tax rates for high-income ones. In contrast, the in many respects comparable model by Bolton and Ockenfels (2000) implies close to zero marginal income tax rates for all.
|
|
| 7. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
-
Optimal Taxation and Other-Regarding Preferences
- 2023
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present paper analyzes optimal redistributive income taxation in a Mirrleesian framework extended with other-regarding preferences at the individual level. We start by developing a general model where the other-regarding preference component of the utility functions is formulated to encompass almost any form of preferences for other people’s disposable income, and then continue with four prominent special cases. Two of these reflect self-centered inequality aversion, based on Fehr and Schmidt (1999) and Bolton and Ockenfels (2000), whereas the other two reflect non-self-centered inequality aversion, where people have preferences for a low Gini coefficient and a high minimum income level in society, respectively. We find that other-regarding preferences may substantially increase the marginal tax rates, including the top rates, and that different types of other-regarding preferences have very different implications for optimal taxation.
|
|
| 8. |
- Bindler, Anna, et al.
(författare)
-
Discontinuities in the Age-Victimization Profile and the Determinants of Victimization
- 2021
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Many rights are conferred on Dutch youth at ages 16 and 18. Using national register data for all reported victimizations, we find sharp and discontinuous increases in victimization rates at these ages: about 13% for both genders at 16 and 9% (15%) for males (females) at 18. These results are comparable across subsamples (based on socio-economic and neighborhood characteristics) with different baseline victimization risks. We assess potential mechanisms using data on offense location, cross-cohort variation in the minimum legal drinking age driven by a 2014 reform, and survey data of alcohol/drug consumption and mobility behaviors. We conclude that the bundle of access to weak alcohol, bars/clubs and smoking increases victimization at 16 and that age 18 rights (hard alcohol, marijuana coffee shops) exacerbate this risk; vehicle access does not play an important role. Finally, we do not find systematic spillover effects onto individuals who have not yet received these rights.
|
|
| 9. |
- Bolin, Kristian, et al.
(författare)
-
A Dual Approach to the Derivation of Feedback Demand Functions for Capital-Accumulating Agents
- 2024
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An optimal control model of a consumer is developed that accounts for the consumption of many goods and services, the accumulation of wealth, a state variable that affects instantaneous preferences and wealth accumulation, and contains several canonical models as special cases. Formulas are provided for the feedback consumption functions in terms of certain partial derivatives of a consumer’s lifetime indirect utility function, thereby obviating the need to solve the necessary conditions of Pontryagin or the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. The intrinsic qualitative properties of the optimal control model in differential form are derived, and an example of how to implement the results for econometric purposes is provided as well.
|
|
| 10. |
- Bolin, Kristian, et al.
(författare)
-
CAPABILITY, HEALTH, AND THE LABOUR MARKET – THE RETIREMENT DECISION
- 2021
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The time of retirement is analyzed in a theoretical framework taking capability and health into account. Capability if formalized as a stock characteristic which determines the attained amounts of a composite good which yields utility. The model is purposely simple and comprises one choice variable – the time of retirement. The core assumption is that inherited capability influences the rate of evolvement of health, and vice versa, and that the rates of change of the stocks differ between the pre- and post-retirement periods. The optimal retirement timing decision is characterized and the effects of the model’s exogenous variables on this decision are examined. We derive refutable comparative statistics results with respect to the model’s exogenous variables, and, for example, show – for a specified version of the model – how the timing of retirement depends on the inherited amounts of capability and health.
|
|
