It has been known for centuries that the rich and famous have longer lives than the poor and ordinary. Causality, however, remains trenchantly debated. The ideal experiment would be one in which status and money could somehow be dropped upon a sub-sample of individuals while those in a control...

The standard expected utility model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki puzzle). The existing literature disagrees on whether prospect theory overturns the puzzle. We disentangle four distinct elements of prospect theory and find loss...

We present a theoretical model postulating that the relationship between crime and governance is "hump-shaped" rather than linearly decreasing. State failure, anarchy and a lack of infrastructure are not conducive for the establishment of any business. This includes illegal businesses, as...

Ransoms paid to Somali pirates are drifting upward and negotiation times are increasing, yet there is huge variation in bargaining outcomes across shipowners. We use a unique dataset of 179 Somali hijackings, and an underlying theoretical model of the bargaining process based on detailed...

We examine the optimal auditing problem of a tax authority when taxpayers can choose both to evade and avoid. For a convex penalty function the incentive-compatibility constraints may bind for the richest taxpayer and at a positive level of both evasion and avoidance. The audit function is...

We analyse a model in which families may either be “traditional” single-earner with caring for the child at home or “modern” double-earner households using market child care. Family policies may favour either the one or the other group, like market care subsidies vs. cash for care....

The taxation of high-income earners is of importance to every country and is the subject of a considerable amount of recent academic research. Such high-income earners contribute substantial amounts of tax and generate signifi cant positive spillovers, but are also highly mobile: a 1% increase...

The psychological basis for rank-dependent probability weighting, and for an inverse-S probability weighting function (PWF) in particular, has often been questioned. I examine the existence and shape of the PWF in a model allowing for optimism/pessimism over probability distributions and for...

Recent years have witnessed the growth of mass-marketed tax avoidance schemes aimed at the middle (not top) of the income distribution, with significant implications for tax revenue. We examine the consequences, for the structure of income tax, and for tax authority anti-avoidance efforts, of...

We construct a simple model incorporating various urban labour market phenomena obtaining in developing economies. Our initial formulation assumes an integrated labour market and allows for entrepreneurship, self-employment and wage employment. We then introduce labour market segmentation. In...