The hidden costs of tax evasion. Collaborative tax evasion in markets for expert services

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Balafoutas, Loukas; Beck, Adrian; Kerschbamer, Rudolf; Sutter, Matthias
• 署名单位: University of Innsbruck; University of Innsbruck; University of Cologne
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.06.003
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 14-25
• 关键词: Credence goods; Expert services; Tax evasion; FRAUD; experiment

摘要

We experimentally examine the impact of tax evasion attempts on the performance of credence goods markets, where contractual incompleteness results from asymmetric information on the welfare maximizing quality of the goods. Our results suggest that tax evasion attempts - independently of whether they are successful or not - lead to efficiency losses in the form of too low quality and less frequent trade. Thus, shadow economies may reduce welfare not only by inducing agents to incur costs to hide or to uncover taxable transactions, by imposing risk on uncertainty-averse tax evaders and by distorting competition, but also by creating an additional efficiency loss in the underlying market by forfeiting possible gains from trade and by inducing insufficient quality provision. We call these the hidden costs of tax evasion. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier By. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).