Does tax evasion affect unemployment and educational choice?

Ann-Sofie Kolm () and Birthe Larsen
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Birthe Larsen: Copenhagen Business School, Postal: Solbjerg Plade 3, DK-2000 Copenhagen, Denmark

No 2004:4, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation

Abstract: To examine the macro economic effects of government tax and punishment policies, this paper develops a three-sector general quilibrium model featuring matching frictions, heterogenous abilities and an informal sector with tax evasion. The choice of education is determined endogenously. Job opportunities in an informal sector are available only to workers who choose not to acquire higher education. We find that increased punishment of informal activities increases the number of educated workers and reduces the number of unemployed workers. Characterizing the optimal tax and punishment system, we show that it is optimal to more than fully counteract the distortion created by the government’s inability to tax the informal sector. The optimal choice of tax and punishment system, however, implies an inefficiently low stock of educated workers.

Keywords: Tax evasion; underground economy; education; matching; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H26 I21 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04-15
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Related works:
Working Paper: Does Tax Evation Affect Unemployment and Educational Choice? (2003)
Working Paper: Does Tax Evasion Affect Unemployment and Educational Choice? (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2004_004

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