Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and the « Broken Windows » Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands

Mathieu Lefebvre, Pierre Pestieau, Arno Riedl and Marie Claire Villeval

No 1116, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: In a series of experiments conducted in Belgium (Wallonia and Flanders), France and the Netherlands, we compare behavior regarding tax evasion and welfare dodging, with and without information about others’ behavior. Subjects have to decide between a "registered" income, the realization of which will be known to the tax authority for sure, and an "unregistered" income that will only be known with some probability. This unregistered income comes from self-employment in the Tax treatment and from black labor supplementing some unemployment compensation in the Welfare treatment. Subjects have then to decide on wether reporting their income or not, knowing the risk od detection. The results show that (i) individuals evade more in the Welfare treatment than in the Tax treatment ; (ii) many subjects choose and option that allows for tax evasion or welfare fraud but report their income honestly anyway ; (iii) examples of low compliance tend to increase tax evasion while examples of high compliance exert no influence ; (iv) tax evasion is more frequent in France and the Netherlands ; Wallons evade taxes less than Flemish. There is no cross-country difference in welfare dodging.

Keywords: tax evasion; social fraud; social comparisons; cross-country comparisons; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 H26 H31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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ftp://ftp.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2011/1116.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and "The Broken Windows" Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
Working Paper: Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and "The Broken Windows" Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
Working Paper: Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and "The Broken Windows" Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
Working Paper: Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and "The Broken Windows" Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
Working Paper: Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and "The Broken Windows" Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
Working Paper: Tax Evasion, Welfare Fraud, and ”The Broken Windows” Effect: An Experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
Working Paper: Tax evasion, welfare fraud, and "the Broken Windows" effect: an experiment in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (2011)
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