IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cer/papers/wp360.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tax Evasion Dynamics in the Czech Republic: First Evidence of an Evasional Kuznets Curve

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Hanousek
  • Filip Palda

Abstract

Using surveys of the Czech Republic taken in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 we measure how the percentage of tax evaders evolved from 1995 until 2006. We find that at first evasion rose, leveled off, and then fell along a quadratic path, suggesting the existence of what we call an evasional Kuznets curve. Our paper is the first to document the existence of an evasional Kuznets curve and to show how it can help improve Markov-chain predictions of tax evasion. We conclude by suggesting that the evasional Kuznets curve may be a subset of a larger trend in evasion for both transitional and developed economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Hanousek & Filip Palda, 2008. "Tax Evasion Dynamics in the Czech Republic: First Evidence of an Evasional Kuznets Curve," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp360, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    • Handle: RePEc:cer:papers:wp360
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp360.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Friedrich Schneider & Robert Klinglmair, 2004. "Shadow economies around the world: what do we know?," Economics working papers 2004-03, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    2. Schneider, Friedrich, 2005. "Shadow economies around the world: what do we really know?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 598-642, September.
    3. Matsusaka, John G & Palda, Filip, 1999. "Voter Turnout: How Much Can We Explain?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 98(3-4), pages 431-446, March.
    4. Pommerehne, Werner W & Weck-Hannemann, Hannelore, 1996. "Tax Rates, Tax Administration and Income Tax Evasion in Switzerland," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 88(1-2), pages 161-170, July.
    5. Fortin, Bernard & Lacroix, Guy & Montmarquette, Claude, 2000. "Are Underground Workers More Likely to be Underground Consumers?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 838-860, October.
    6. Schneider, Friedrich G., 2007. "Shadow Economies and Corruption All Over the World: New Estimates for 145 Countries," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 1, pages 1-66.
    7. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    8. Orviska, Marta & Hudson, John, 2003. "Tax evasion, civic duty and the law abiding citizen," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 83-102, March.
    9. Dominik H. Enste & Friedrich Schneider, 2000. "Shadow Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 77-114, March.
    10. Niepelt, Dirk, 2003. "Tax Evasion Dynamics," Seminar Papers 721, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    11. Jan Hanousek & Filip Palda, 2006. "Problems measuring the underground economy in transition1," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 14(4), pages 707-718, October.
    12. Christos Constantatos & Edwin G. West, 1991. "Measuring Returns from Education: Some Neglected Factors," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 17(2), pages 127-138, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leibfritz, Willi, 2011. "Undeclared economic activity in central and eastern Europe -- how taxes contribute and how countries respond to the problem," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5923, The World Bank.
    2. Torgler, Benno, 2011. "Tax morale, eastern Europe and European enlargement," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5911, The World Bank.
    3. Alexandre Couture Gagnon, 2018. "Filip Palda: In memoriam," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 213-217, March.
    4. Torgler, Benno, 2011. "Tax morale and compliance : review of evidence and case studies for Europe," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5922, The World Bank.
    5. Johannes Koettl & Truman Packard & Claudio E. Montenegro, 2012. "In From the Shadow : Integrating Europe's Informal Labor," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 9377.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich & Schaltegger, Christoph A., 2007. "With or Against the People? The Impact of a Bottom-Up Approach on Tax Morale and the Shadow Economy," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt6331x6vz, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    2. Colin C. Williams, 2023. "A Modern Guide to the Informal Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 18668.
    3. Dóra Benedek & Orsolya Lelkes, 2011. "The Distributional Implications of Income Under‐Reporting in Hungary," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 32(4), pages 539-560, December.
    4. Paola Profeta & Simona Scabrosetti, 2010. "The Political Economy of Taxation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13258.
    5. Suslov, N. & Mel'tenisova, E., 2015. "Analysis of Energy Price's Impact on Shadow Economies Around the World," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 12-43.
    6. Matsaganis, Manos & Flevotomou, Maria, 2010. "Distributional implications of tax evasion in Greece," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 26074, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Adriana AnaMaria Davidescu (Alexandru) & Ion Dobre, 2013. "The Impact of Unemployment Rate on the Size of Romanian Shadow Economy," Public Finance Review, , vol. 41(5), pages 578-607, September.
    8. Psychoyios, Dimitrios & Missiou, Olympia & Dergiades, Theologos, 2021. "Energy based estimation of the shadow economy: The role of governance quality," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 797-808.
    9. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2011. "Tax Morale, Tax Evasion and the Shadow Economy," Chapters, in: Friedrich Schneider (ed.), Handbook on the Shadow Economy, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Matsaganis, Manos & Benedek, Dóra & Flevotomou, Maria & Lelkes, Orsolya & Mantovani, Daniela & Nienadowska, Sylwia, 2010. "Distributional implications of income tax evasion in Greece, Hungary and Italy," MPRA Paper 21465, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Manos Matsaganis & Maria Flevotomou, 2010. "Distributional Implications of Tax Evasion in Greece," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 31, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    12. Feige, Edgar L., 2016. "Professor Schneider's Shadow Economy:What do we really know? A Rejoinder," MPRA Paper 71903, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Roberto Dell'Anno & Adalgiso Amendola, 2008. "Istituzioni, Diseguaglianza ed Economia Sommersa: quale relazione?," Quaderni DSEMS 24-2008, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Matematiche e Statistiche, Universita' di Foggia.
    14. Jamie Bologna, 2017. "Contagious corruption, informal employment, and income: evidence from Brazilian municipalities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 58(1), pages 67-118, January.
    15. Hibbs Jr., Douglas A. & Piculescu, Violeta, 2005. "Tax Toleration and Tax Compliance: How Government Affects the Propensity of Firms to Enter the Uno¢ cial Economy," Working Papers in Economics 173, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 18 Jun 2009.
    16. Elgin, Ceyhun & Oyvat, Cem, 2013. "Lurking in the cities: Urbanization and the informal economy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 36-47.
    17. Schneider Friedrich & Buehn Andreas, 2017. "Shadow Economy: Estimation Methods, Problems, Results and Open questions," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-29, March.
    18. Friedrich Schneider & Gorana Krstić & Milojko Arsić & Saša Ranđelović, 2015. "What Is the Extent of the Shadow Economy in Serbia?," Contributions to Economics, in: Gorana Krstić & Friedrich Schneider (ed.), Formalizing the Shadow Economy in Serbia, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 47-75, Springer.
    19. Friedrich Schneider & Andreas Buehn & Claudio E. Montenegro, 2011. "Shadow Economies All Over the World: New Estimates for 162 Countries from 1999 to 2007," Chapters, in: Friedrich Schneider (ed.), Handbook on the Shadow Economy, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Axel Dreher & Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Friedrich Schneider, 2014. "The devil is in the shadow. Do institutions affect income and productivity or only official income and official productivity?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 121-141, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Underground economy; tax evasion; Markov chains; transition; evasional Kuznets curve.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cer:papers:wp360. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucie Vasiljevova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eiacacz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.