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232. Tax Audits as Scarecrows: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
- Author:
- Ricardo Perez Truglia, Matias Giaccobasso, Guillermo Cruces, Rodrigo Ceni, and Marcelo Bergolo
- Publication Date:
- 11-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
- Abstract:
- The canonical model of Allingham and Sandmo (1972) predicts that firms evade taxes by optimally trading off between the costs and benefits of evasion. However, there is no direct evidence that firms react to audits in this way. We conducted a large-scale field experiment in collaboration with Uruguay’s tax authority to address this question. We sent letters to 20,440 small- and medium-sized firms that collectively paid more than 200 million dollars in taxes per year. Our letters provided exogenous yet nondeceptive signals about key inputs for their evasion decisions, such as audit probabilities and penalty rates. We measured the effect of these signals on their subsequent perceptions about the auditing process, based on survey data, as well as on the actual taxes paid, based on administrative data. We find that providing information about audits had a significant effect on tax compliance but in a manner that was inconsistent with Allingham and Sandmo (1972). Our findings are consistent with an alternative model, risk-as-feelings, in which messages about audits generate fear and induce probability neglect. According to this model, audits may deter tax evasion in the same way that scarecrows frighten off birds.
- Topic:
- Economics, Global Political Economy, Tax Systems, Economic Policy, and Macroeconomics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Argentina, and Global Focus
233. Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions
- Author:
- David Jaume and Alexander Willén
- Publication Date:
- 03-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
- Abstract:
- Temporary school closures (TSC) represent a major challenge to policymakers across the globe due to their potential impact on instructional time and student achievement. A neglected but equally important question relates to how such closures affect the labor market behavior of parents. This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of temporary school closures on parental labor market behavior, exploiting the prevalence of primary school teacher strikes across time and provinces in Argentina. We find clear evidence that temporary school closures negatively impact the labor market participation of mothers, in particular lower-skilled mothers less attached to the labor force and mothers in dual-income households who face a lower opportunity cost of dropping out of the labor force. This effect translates into a statistically significant and economically meaningful reduction in labor earnings: the average mother whose child is exposed to ten days of TSCs suffers a decline in monthly labor earnings equivalent to 2.92% of the mean. While we do not find any effects among fathers in general, fathers with lower predicted earnings than their spouses also experience negative labor market effects. This suggests that the parental response to TSCs depend, at least in part, on the relative income of each parent. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggest that the aggregate impact of TSCs on annual parental earnings is more than $113 million, and that the average mother would be willing to forego 1.6 months of labor earnings in order to ensure that there are no TSCs while her child is in primary school.
- Topic:
- Economics, Education, Markets, Political Economy, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- United States
234. U.S. Security Coordination and the “Global War on Terror”
- Author:
- Jeannette Greven
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- The U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) mission in Jerusalem was created in 2005 to help implement security sector reform within the Palestinian Authority (PA). With a single-minded focus on “counterterrorism,” Washington considered the USSC an ancillary mechanism to support U.S. diplomatic and political efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite upending long-standing U.S. policy and cutting all other forms of aid to the Palestinians, the Trump administration has maintained the USSC in the run-up to the “Deal of the Century.” This article draws on original interviews with security personnel responsible for enacting USSC interventions. It uses their insights to highlight how the mission tethered Israeli political aims to its remit, and the distorting ramifications that have ensued for Palestine and the Palestinians. In uncovering the full parameters of Washington’s securitization policy, this history also points to the ways in which the PA has consequently been woven into the U.S.-led “global War on Terror.”
- Topic:
- Security, Sovereignty, International Security, Military Affairs, Negotiation, and Settler Colonialism
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem
235. Postwar Nakba: A Microhistory of the Depopulation of Zakariyya, 1950
- Author:
- Dan Tsahor
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This study follows the events that caused the depopulation of the village of Zakariyya, south of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, during the summer of 1950. Using documents from state and military archives, the article constructs the story of the villagers’ expulsion and explores the role of the little-known Transfer Committee in initiating and promoting postwar expulsions of Palestinians from the newly established State of Israel. A close reading of the actions of individual committee members over the course of events uncovers both the Transfer Committee’s modus operandi and the ostensible rationale for the postwar depopulation of the village. The article argues that by packing the committee with representatives of major Israeli power centers, Chair Yosef Weitz in effect laid the groundwork for the continuing expulsion of Palestinians from Israel after the establishment of the state.
- Topic:
- Migration, Population, Rural, Settler Colonialism, and Nation-State
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, and Palestine
236. Special Document File: The Erasure of the Nakba in Israel's Archives
- Author:
- Seth Anziska
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- A 2019 investigation by the Israeli NGO Akevot and Haaretz newspaper has uncovered official suppression of crucial documents about the Nakba in Israeli archives. The Journal of Palestine Studies is publishing print excerpts and a full online version of the buried “migration report,” which details Israel’s depopulation of Palestinian villages in the first six months of the 1948 war, a document that clearly undermines official Israeli state narratives about the course of events. In methodical fashion, this report provides contemporaneous documentation of Israeli culpability in the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and the systematic depopulation of so-called Arab villages in the first six months of the war. Alongside a discussion of key revelations in the newly available document, this introduction situates the broader pattern of erasure within historiographical debates over 1948 and questions of archival access. It examines how accounts of Israel’s birth and Palestinian statelessness have been crafted in relation to the underlying question: who has permission to narrate the past?
- Topic:
- Security, Migration, Population, Ethnic Cleansing, Settler Colonialism, and State Building
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, and Palestine
237. Power, Politics, and Community: Resistance Dynamics in the Occupied Golan
- Author:
- Munir Fakher Eldin
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- In 1967, Israel occupied the western section of Syria’s Golan Heights, expelling some 130,000 of its inhabitants and leaving a few thousand people scattered across five villages. Severed from Syria, this residual and mostly Druze community, known as the Jawlanis, has been subjected to systematic policies of ethno-religious identity reformulation and bureaucratic and economic control by the Israeli regime for half a century. This essay offers an account of the transformation of authority, class, and the politics of representation among what is now the near 25,000-strong Jawlani community, detailing the impact of Israeli occupation both politically and economically. During an initial decade and a half of direct military rule, Israel secured the community’s political docility by restoring traditional leaders to power; but following full-on annexation in 1981, new forces emerged from the popular resistance movement that developed in response. Those forces continue to compete for social influence and representation today.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, National Security, Population, Occupation, Ethnic Cleansing, and Settler Colonialism
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, and Palestine
238. Toward a Politics of Responsibility: The Case of Climate Change
- Author:
- Kathryn Sikkink
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Centerpiece
- Institution:
- Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- And so the topic of the book is a broader book about how to combine rights and responsibilities. And climate change is just one of about five topics I talked about in that book, but it's a particularly useful case to make the main point of the book, and that is that it's not enough in these days to talk about rights. We have a big gap in implementation with rights. And in order to implement rights more fully, we have to think simultaneously about rights and responsibilities. And that when we think of responsibilities, it's not enough to think just about state responsibilities. Of course, and of course with climate change, we want to think about state responsibilities for mitigating climate change, we want to think about corporate responsibilities. But we also want to think about responses of other nonstate actors. And in that I include—I include not just corporations for nonstate actors, but also NGOs, also universities, also individuals.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, Political Activism, Leadership, and NGOs
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
239. Kroc Insight – What It Means to Put Youth in the Driver’s Seat
- Author:
- Kristina Medina
- Publication Date:
- 01-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace Justice, University of San Diego
- Abstract:
- Former Kroc IPJ Program Officer Tina Medina writes the third installment in the Kroc Insight series to dive deeper into both the key capacities youth need in order to be impactful Peace Leaders, as well as the key enablers we need to provide in order for that learning and leading to happen.
- Topic:
- Political Activism, Leadership, Youth, and Peace
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
240. https://www.sandiego.edu/peace/images/ipj/18_Kroc_KrocInsight_PDF_FINAL%202.pdf
- Author:
- Daniel Orth
- Publication Date:
- 01-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace Justice, University of San Diego
- Abstract:
- fforts to improve public safety that involve religious leaders without a strong standing in the community are destined to fail. The question that the Kroc IPJ’s Building Trust Partnership has been wrestling with is, where does this trust come from and how do clergy maintain it? In the first installment of the Institute’s new publication series, Kroc Insight, Program Officer Daniel Orth and Building Trust Partnership cohort members Cornelius Bowser and Archie Robinson explore the difficult balancing act that faith leaders must make to avoid being seen as too closely aligned to the police or the community.
- Topic:
- Religion, Leadership, Peace, Police, Community, and Faith
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America