Summary Effective from 2005, benefits for long-term unemployed have been reduced in Germany to the level of social assistance. This measure reflects the view that “all who are able to work, should work” - a view which makes sense only if the government can distinguish the disabled from the...

Effective from 2005, benefits for long-term unemployed have been reduced in Germany to the level of social assistance. This measure reflects the view that "all who are able to work, should work" - a view which makes sense only if the government can distinguish the disabled from the productive....

Motivated by recent disasters, this article analyzes the risk-sharing aspect in a federation. The regions can be hit by a shock leading to losses that occur with an exogenous probability and in a stochastically independent way. The regions can spend effort on self-insurance to reduce the size of...

We consider a lie-catching experiment with 9240 judgements. A set of videotapes shows subjects participating in a tax compliance experiment. The subjects chose whether or not to misreport. Subjects knew that underreporters were chosen for an audit with some probability. An audit led to detection...

Opponents of work obligations in return for transfer payments argue that workfare can crowd out private sector work, that workfare harms the welfare of the poor and thereby reduces a society’s welfare in general. This paper analyzes these objections against workfare in a discrete optimal...

Ausgehend von dem Umstand, dass Umverteilung in einem Föderalstaat zwei Dimensionen hat – zum einen die Einkommensumverteilung zwischen reicheren und ärmeren Bevölkerungsteilen und zum anderen die Umverteilung von reicheren zu ärmeren Regionen – analysiert der Aufsatz die Fragen, wie...

In a tax compliance experiment with real face-to-face communication between declaring subjects and officers, we analyse the role of both the subject's and the officer's gender for deceptive behaviour. We do not find, first, that the amount of underreporting generally depends on the officer's...

We empirically investigate whether increases in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) budget have an effect on firms’ compliance behavior with securities market rules. Our study uses a dataset on the SEC's resources and its enforcement actions over a period beginning shortly...

We study deception choices, the self-selection of capable and less capable deceivers and deception detection in a tax compliance experiment. We find large systematic differences between whether subjects are perceived as honest or as dishonest. Taxpayers are seemingly aware of these perceptions....