Motivation and collusion among agents in the evasion of indirect taxes: an experimental approach

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The Condorcet paradox: an experimental approach to a voting process

This paper analyses the effects played by rules within a coordination game. The starting point is constituted by the wide field of Public Choice theories. More precisely the focus of the research is on the stability of the voting process. The experiment is build on a game played through computers and the experimental subjects must perform some choices that can led to different individual and collective solutions. The game that they play is based on a set of rules that must be voted by the players themselves before a new session of the experiment will be run. The idea is to verify the degree of stability of the collective choices (logrolling phenomena)

Free riding and norms of control: self determination and imposition. An experimental comparison.

This is an experiment on the effect of norm application in a public good game. We want to investigate whether a control norm affects the contribution level differently, only in relation to the way in which the norm is applied in the game. We compare the amount of public good provided in two different groups. In the first group (constituent group), experimental subjects create a control norm, and then they self-apply it in a basic public good game. In the second group (control group), the norm created by the constituent group is exogenously imposed. Experimental results show a significant difference between the two public good levels considered. Self determination implies a higher level of efficiency, as compared to the exogenous one.public good games, free riding, norm of control, voluntary contribution

Dynamic behaviours in tax evasion. An experimental approach

This paper investigates, from an experimental perspective, on the tax payers behaviour in a dynamic context and more precisely tries to cope with three main topics related to tax evasion. The first aspect analysed regards the effects produced by a repetitive dynamic choice process on the subjects’ attitude towards risk and on the ability to learn to cope with risk. The second theme treated is about the effects produced on the tax payers by the inclusion in the experimental design of psychological moral constraints. The final topic is on the effects produced by the specific experimental context chosen (the simulation of a fiscal environment compared with other simulated environments). The main results emerged from the 8 experiments carried out confirmed the importance of the psychological factors in determining the tax payers actual behaviours and shown the complex dynamic that the agents activate to cope with risk

Is It Just Legitimacy of Endowments? An Experimental Analysis of Unilateral Giving

Deviations from standard game theoretical predictions have been repeatedly observed in basic Dictator Games. Different interpretations have been provided to these deviations. On the one hand, empirical (among others, Forsythe et al., 1994) and theoretical works (among others, Bolton and Ockenfels, 2000; Fehr and Schmidt, 1999) have adopted the explanation based on other-regarding concerns. On the other hand, potential weaknesses in standard design of the game have been stressed. Evidence collected shows that when controlling for reputation considerations (Hoffman et al., 1996) and for legitimacy of assets (Cherry et al., 2002) behavior observed in the experiments is very close to that predicted by standard game theory. Results from our experiment suggest that the relevance of these two factors in explaining observed behavior may be overestimated by previous contributions. Relevant deviations from selfish equilibrium are registered in a condition of full-anonymity when assets to be shared are earned by the dictators and, simultaneously, recipients are allowed to work without being rewarded for their effort.