We examine how in-kind transfers provided by local governments affect economic inequality. The allocation of in-kind transfers to households and the adjustment for differences in needs are derived from a model of local government spending behavior. The model distinguishes between fixed and...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

We consider concepts and models that are useful for measuring how strongly the distribution of a positive response Y is concentrated near a value with a focus on how concentration varies as a function of covariates. We combine ideas from statistics, economics and reliability theory. Lorenz...

The expenditure method of Pissarides and Weber (1989) [Journal of Public Economics, 39 (1), 17- 32) shows how one backs out measure of income underreporting by the self-employed by using food consumption as trace of true income. In this paper we make a case for using panel data and fixed effects...

Third-party reporting and employers’ tax withholding are powerful compliance mechanisms, as long as the employer and employee do not collude to evade. Using data from randomly assigned on-site audits among 2,462 Norwegian firms, we provide evidence of collusive tax evasion. We find that firms...

In medieval times, most people identifi ed with religious values and aggregate income and productivity grew at glacier speed. In the 20th century, religion played a much lesser role in daily life and income and productivity grew at high and unprecedented rates. The present paper develops a...

From 1997 to 2005, an astonishing 5,200 million USD was invested to reduce cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main cocaine producer. However, little is known about the effectiveness of policies targeting coca cultivation. This paper uses a surveybased experiment to evaluate the effects...

Approximately 1.2% of Colombia's GNP is spent every year on the war on drugs, but very little is known about coca farming decisions at the household level. In order to understand the decision to cultivate coca as well as that of the amount of land to use for its cultivation, we develop an...

Although empowerment is seen as intrinsically important and instrumentally valuable to escape poverty, there is very little research on the empirical drivers of empowerment. Using custom-made household-level information and using advanced econometric techniques that also correct for endogeneity,...

The intense debate on the effectiveness of the war on drugs contrasts with the lack of empirical evidence on its impacts. To evaluate the effectiveness of control-supply policies, we use micro data from an original survey with farmers living in a coca growing area in Colombia. We find that while...