The fundamental challenge for refining theories of communication and uncertainty is to abandon the assumption that uncertainty will produce anxiety. To better explain processes of communication and uncertainty management the authors must answer questions about a) the experience and meaning of uncertainty b) the role of appraisal and emotion in uncertainty management and c) the range of behavioral and psychological responses to uncertainty. This paper outlines and extends a theory of uncertainty management and reviews current theory and research in this area. In addition to the theoretical advances promised by this perspective the paper describes applications to health communication practice. The drive in disease prevention to reduce uncertainty about the state of health and illness has led to a "culture of chronic illness". Constant surveillance of peoples health combined with improved methods for screening and monitoring virtually guarantee finding something wrong with every person creating a society divided into the chronically ill and the worried well (i.e. those waiting to be diagnosed). (authors)

Communication and Uncertainty Management.

Foreword Valerie Braithwaite Preface 1. Introduction 2. Tax law, the shadow economy and tax non-compliance 3. Social representations of taxes 4. Tax compliance decisions 5. Self-employment and taxpaying 6. Interaction between tax authorities and taxpayers 7. Cautious conclusions.

/pdf/the-economic-psychology-of-tax-behaviour-3dztbpsp8z.pdf

The Economic Psychology of Tax Behaviour

In this paper, I assess what we have learned about tax evasion since Michael Allingham and Agnar Sandmo launched the modern analysis of tax evasion in 1972. I focus on three specific questions and the answers to these questions that have emerged over the years. First, how do we measure the extent of evasion? Second, how can we explain these patterns of behavior? Third, how can we use these insights to control evasion? In the process, I illustrate my own answers to these questions by highlighting various specific examples of research. My main conclusion is that we have learned many things but that we also still have many gaps in our understanding of how to measure, explain, and control tax evasion. I also give some suggestions—and some predictions—about where promising avenues of future research may lie.

/pdf/measuring-explaining-and-controlling-tax-evasion-lessons-429dna9yh6.pdf

Measuring, explaining, and controlling tax evasion: lessons from theory, experiments, and field studies

The opportunity to profit from dishonesty evokes a motivational conflict between the temptation to cheat for selfish gain and the desire to act in a socially appropriate manner. Honesty may depend on self-control given that self-control is the capacity that enables people to override antisocial selfish responses in favor of socially desirable responses. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that dishonesty would increase when people’s self-control resources were depleted by an initial act of self-control. Depleted participants misrepresented their performance for monetary gain to a greater extent than did non-depleted participants (Experiment 1). Perhaps more troubling, depleted participants were more likely than non-depleted participants to expose themselves to the temptation to cheat, thereby aggravating the effects of depletion on cheating (Experiment 2). Results indicate that dishonesty increases when people’s capacity to exert self-control is impaired, and that people may be particularly vulnerable to this effect because they do not predict it.

Too tired to tell the truth: Self-control resource depletion and dishonesty

We revisit the minimum wage-employment debate, which is as old as the Department of Labor. In particular, we assess new studies claiming that the standard panel data approach used in much of the "new minimum wage research" is flawed because it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity. These new studies use research designs intended to control for this heterogeneity and conclude that minimum wages in the United States have not reduced employment. We explore the ability of these research designs to isolate reliable identifying information and test the untested assumptions in this new research about the construction of better control groups. Our evidence points to serious problems with these research designs. We conclude that the evidence still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others, and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/dp7166.pdf?abstractid=2210826&mirid=1&type=2

Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater?

While obligatory advance tax payments do not inter- fere with the taxpayer's evasion decision under expected utility theory, they do affect the decision to evade under prospect theory. The present paper applies prospect theory to a simple model of tax evasion, exploring the role that advance tax payments may play in enforcing tax laws. The paper demonstrates, as empirically found in the United States, that advance tax payments may substitute for costly detection efforts in enhancing compliance. However, con- trary to a recent claim in the tax evasion literature, deliberate high advance tax payments are unlikely to eliminate the incentives for noncompliance.

https://www.ntanet.org/NTJ/52/4/ntj-v52n04p753-64-tax-compliance-advance-tax.pdf

Tax Compliance and Advance Tax Payments: A Prospect Theory Analysis

Junk-food, home cooking, physical activity and obesity: The effect of the fat tax and the thin subsidy

Withholding and non-withheld tax evasion

This note develops a general model of tax evasion applicable to any form of evasion that might be practiced by the firm It shows that the firm's activity level is always separable from the evasion

Gideon Yaniv

Papers

Tax Compliance and Advance Tax Payments: A Prospect Theory Analysis

Junk-food, home cooking, physical activity and obesity: The effect of the fat tax and the thin subsidy

Withholding and non-withheld tax evasion

A note on the taxevading firm

Workaholism and marital estrangement: A rational-choice perspective