Libros

Resumen: 

According to the canonical model of Allingham and Sandmo (1972), firms evade taxes by making a trade-off between a lower tax burden and higher expected penalties. However, there is still no consensus about whether real-world firms operate in this rational way. We conducted a large-scale field experiment, sending letters to over 20,000 firms that collectively pay over 200 million dollars in taxes per year. In our letters, we provided firms with exogenous but nondeceptive signals about key inputs for their evasion decisions, such as audit probabilities and penalty rates. We measure the effect of these signals on their subsequent perceptions about the auditing process, based on survey data, as well as on the actual taxes paid, according to administrative data. We find that firms do increase their tax compliance in response to information about audits. However, the patterns in these responses are inconsistent with utility maximization. The evidence suggests that, much like scarecrows frighten off birds, audits can be a significant deterrent for tax evaders even though they would be perceived as harmless by a rational optimizer.

Resumen 

In this paper we show how to compute asymptotic variances of filtered and smoothed probabilities in a Dynamic Factor Markov-Switching autoregressive model. Using real time data of four economic indicators, we estimate these probabilities and their variances for the US economy. Our results show that the confidence intervals based on the asymptotic distribution of filtered probabilities provide more accurate information to identify the business cycles turning points.

Abstract 

This paper analyzes the business cycle of a small commodity-exporting economy. Using Chilean data, we show SVAR evidence of the effect of a commodity price shock on the  non-commodity economy. A positive shock to the commodity price leads to an increase in both non-commodity output and employment, a real exchange rate appreciation, an increase in investment and a decrease in the non-commodity trade balance. Moreover, we find that commodity price fluctuations contribute to 40 percent of the variance of non-commodity output. We build a theoretical three-sector model where the commodity good is produced with a technology that requires non-tradable investment and intermediate goods. An increase in the price of commodity rises the demand and the price of non-tradable goods. It also induces a factor reallocation and an increase in total labor demand, leading to an expansion of the non-commodity economy. Our quantitative results have a good fit to the data and emulate reasonably well the dynamic response of the non-commodity economy to a commodity price shock.