An empirical literature has found that neighborhood heterogeneity lowers people's likelihood of contributing to public goods. We show that the estimated effect of any concave neighborhood characteristic on behavior may be biased when “large” rather than “small” neighborhoods are used....

In this paper we present a rare empirical study on the determinants of tax filing compliance in the United States using county and state level data from 2000 to 2006. As well as including explanatory variables identified in the rational compliance framework such as audit and penalty rates, we...

Human capital and, therefore, education have an impact on the societys future welfare. In this paper we study the connection between the voters support to public education and the retirement concerns. We show that voters anticipate the positive effect of education on future pensions. The support...

The effects of a recent Swedish child-care fee reform are compared with those of an alternative reform, increased child benefits. The fee reform implied considerably decreased fees and was intended to increase both labor supply among parents and their economic well-being. We estimate labor...

This paper study the income of Swedish households belonging to the baby boom generation, i.e those born in the 1940-50. An international comparison as well as an historical presentation of income patterns is given. However, the main purpose is to generate the future income of the baby boom...

The income of the self-employed is often assumed to be understated in economic statistics. Debate exists about the extent of under-reporting and the resulting measures of the size of the underground economy. This paper refines a method developed by Pissarides and Weber (1989) and uses...

We propose a mechanism to implement the distributional goal of "specific egalitarianism", or that allocation of a good be independent of income, but increasing in relative strength of preference or need. Governments could offer the good at multiple "outlets" that charge different money and time...

We propose an allocation mechanism for publicly providing a private good such that the final allocation is simultaneously independent of income and increasing in strength of preference or need. The "pay or wait" mechanism consists of offering the good for sale at two outlets. The 'queuing'...

We examine the impact of a policy reform that gave employees in a municipality extended rights to self-declare sickness absence. To identify the effect of bypassing the physician as an absence certifier we contrast the development of absence in the reform municipality with absence in similar...

The objective of this paper is to study if taxpayers behave in a loss averse manner when filing their tax returns. This is important for tax design but also for understanding human behavior in general. The predictions of prospect theory can be contrasted to those of expected utility theory. We...