EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

With or Against the People? The Impact of a Bottom-Up Approach on Tax Morale and the Shadow Economy

Benno Torgler, Friedrich Schneider () and Christoph Schaltegger

Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics

Abstract: Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is also a bottom-up approach: decentralizing the political power to those who are close to the problems and give them a direct political say. This paper analyses the impact of direct democracy and local autonomy on tax morale and the size of the shadow economy. We use two different data sets on tax morale at the individual level (World Values Survey and International Social Survey Programme), and macro data of the size of the shadow economy to systematically analyse the effects of institutions in Switzerland, a country where participation rights and the degree of federalism vary across different cantons. The findings suggest that direct democratic rights and local autonomy, have a significantly positive effect on tax morale and the size of the shadow economy.

Keywords: Tax Morale; Shadow Economy; Tax Compliance; Tax Evasion; Direct Democracy; Local Autonomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-01-23
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6331x6vz.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: With or Against the People? The Impact of a Bottom-Up Approach on Tax Morale and the Shadow Economy (2007) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:oplwec:qt6331x6vz

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-30
Handle: RePEc:cdl:oplwec:qt6331x6vz