IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v143y2016icp64-72.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Progressive taxation in a tournament economy

Author

Listed:
  • Carpenter, Jeffrey
  • Matthews, Peter Hans
  • Tabb, Benjamin

Abstract

Not enough is known about the responsiveness of individuals, in particular those who work under different incentives, to changes in marginal tax rates. We ask whether changes in tax rates are less distortionary for workers engaged in a contest. To examine this potential rationale for a more progressive tax code, we first model the effort decisions of workers faced with progressive taxation under tournaments and piece rates. Because of the difficulty identifying any distortion that may be induced by the tax code in naturally occurring data, we then report on the results of a real-effort experiment based on this model. Consistent with a behavioral approach to public finance, we find that competitive tournament workers are less sensitive and hint, in our discussion, at the possible welfare benefits of progressive taxation in tournament economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Carpenter, Jeffrey & Matthews, Peter Hans & Tabb, Benjamin, 2016. "Progressive taxation in a tournament economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 64-72.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:143:y:2016:i:c:p:64-72
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.08.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272716300986
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.08.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Thomas Lemieux & W. Bentley MacLeod & Daniel Parent, 2009. "Performance Pay and Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 1-49.
    3. Lévy-Garboua, Louis & Masclet, David & Montmarquette, Claude, 2009. "A behavioral Laffer curve: Emergence of a social norm of fairness in a real effort experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 147-161, April.
    4. Djanali, Iwan & Sheehan-Connor, Damien, 2012. "Tax affinity hypothesis: Do we really hate paying taxes?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 758-775.
    5. Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "What Happens When You Tax the Rich? Evidence from Executive Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 352-378, April.
    6. Edward P. Lazear & Kathryn L. Shaw, 2007. "Personnel Economics: The Economist's View of Human Resources," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 91-114, Fall.
    7. Sheremeta, Roman M., 2010. "Experimental comparison of multi-stage and one-stage contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 731-747, March.
    8. Lazear, Edward P. & Oyer, Paul, 2004. "Internal and external labor markets: a personnel economics approach," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 527-554, October.
    9. Sillamaa, M. A., 1999. "How work effort responds to wage taxation: A non-linear versus a linear tax experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 219-233, June.
    10. Steffen Altmann & Armin Falk & Matthias Wibral, 2012. "Promotions and Incentives: The Case of Multistage Elimination Tournaments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 149-174.
    11. Johannes Abeler & Simon Jäger, 2013. "Complex Tax Incentives - An Experimental Investigation," CESifo Working Paper Series 4231, CESifo.
    12. Stefania Ottone & Ferruccio Ponzano, 2007. "Laffer curve in a non-Leviathan scenario: a real - effort experiment," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(48), pages 1-7.
    13. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    14. Mats Persson & Agnar Sandmo, 2005. "Taxation and Tournaments," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 7(4), pages 543-559, October.
    15. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 230-271, February.
    16. Amy Finkelstein, 2009. "E-ztax: Tax Salience and Tax Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 969-1010.
    17. Bruggen, Alexander & Strobel, Martin, 2007. "Real effort versus chosen effort in experiments," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 232-236, August.
    18. Martin Fochmann & Joachim Weimann, 2013. "The Effects of Tax Salience and Tax Experience on Individual Work Efforts in a Framed Field Experiment," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(4), pages 511-542, December.
    19. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    20. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    21. Sutter, Matthias & Weck-Hannemann, Hannelore, 2003. "Taxation and the Veil of Ignorance--A Real Effort Experiment on the Laffer Curve," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 115(1-2), pages 217-240, April.
    22. Rupert Sausgruber & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2005. "Testing the Mill hypothesis of fiscal illusion," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 39-68, January.
    23. Stefania Ottone & Ferruccio Ponzano, 2011. "How people perceive the Welfare State: a real-effort experiment," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 58(2), pages 165-183, June.
    24. Sausgruber, Rupert & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2011. "Are we taxing ourselves?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 164-176.
    25. Heinz König & François Laisney & Michael Lechner & Winfried Pohlmeier, 1995. "Tax Illusion and Labour Supply of Married Women: Evidence from German Data," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 347-368, August.
    26. Lévy-Garboua, Louis & Masclet, David & Montmarquette, Claude, 2009. "A behavioral Laffer curve: Emergence of a social norm of fairness in a real effort experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 147-161, April.
    27. Swenson, Charles W., 1988. "Taxpayer behavior in response to taxation: An experimental analysis," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 1-28.
    28. Emmanuel Saez, 2001. "Using Elasticities to Derive Optimal Income Tax Rates," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 205-229.
    29. Hua Chen & Sung H. Ham & Noah Lim, 2011. "Designing Multiperson Tournaments with Asymmetric Contestants: An Experimental Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 864-883, May.
    30. Kräkel, Matthias, 2008. "Emotions in tournaments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 204-214, July.
    31. Michael P. Keane, 2011. "Labor Supply and Taxes: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(4), pages 961-1075, December.
    32. Peter Diamond & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 165-190, Fall.
    33. DavidJ. Cooper & Hanming Fang, 2008. "Understanding Overbidding In Second Price Auctions: An Experimental Study," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1572-1595, October.
    34. van Dijk, Frans & Sonnemans, Joep & van Winden, Frans, 2001. "Incentive systems in a real effort experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 187-214, February.
    35. Sausgruber, Rupert & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2011. "Are we taxing ourselves?: How deliberation and experience shape voting on taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1-2), pages 164-176, February.
    36. Dohmen, Thomas & Falk, Armin & Fliessbach, Klaus & Sunde, Uwe & Weber, Bernd, 2011. "Relative versus absolute income, joy of winning, and gender: Brain imaging evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3-4), pages 279-285, April.
    37. Ackermann, Hagen & Fochmann, Martin & Mihm, Benedikt, 2013. "Biased effects of taxes and subsidies on portfolio choices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 23-26.
    38. Sillamaa, M. A., 1999. "How work effort responds to wage taxation: An experimental test of a zero top marginal tax rate," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 125-134, July.
    39. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    40. Sillamaa, M. A., 1999. "Taxpayer behavior in response to taxation: comment and new experimental evidence," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 165-177.
    41. William Stein & Amnon Rapoport, 2005. "Symmetric two-stage contests with budget constraints," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 309-328, September.
    42. Arrazola, Maria & de Hevia, Jose & Sanz, Jose F., 2000. "More on tax perception and labour supply: the Spanish case," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 15-21, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yizhaq Minchuk & Aner Sela, 2021. "Subsidy and Taxation in All-Pay Auctions under Incomplete," Working Papers 2104, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    2. Weber, Matthias, 2019. "Behavioral Optimal Taxation: The Case of Aspirations," SocArXiv fpnw6, Center for Open Science.
    3. Minchuk, Yizhaq & Sela, Aner, 2023. "Subsidy and taxation in all-pay auctions under incomplete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 99-114.
    4. Matthias Weber, 2021. "Behavioral optimal taxation: Aspirations," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 5(1), pages 19-26, Septembre.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hagen Ackermann & Martin Fochmann & Nadja Wolf, 2016. "The Effect of Straight-Line and Accelerated Depreciation Rules on Risky Investment Decisions—An Experimental Study," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-26, October.
    2. Fochmann, Martin & Hemmerich, Kristina, 2014. "Real tax effects and tax perception effects in decisions on asset allocation," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 156, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    3. Hamza Umer, 2019. "Tax Framing and Productivity: evidence based on the strategy elicitation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(1), pages 33-40.
    4. Ackermann, Hagen & Fochmann, Martin, 2014. "The effect of straight-line and accelerated depreciation rules on risky investment decisions: An experimental study," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 158, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    5. Claudia Keser & David Masclet & Claude Montmarquette, 2020. "Labor Supply, Taxation, and the Use of Tax Revenues: A Real-Effort Experiment in Canada, France, and Germany," Public Finance Review, , vol. 48(6), pages 714-750, November.
    6. Doerrenberg, Philipp & Duncan, Denvil, 2014. "Experimental evidence on the relationship between tax evasion opportunities and labor supply," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 48-70.
    7. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    8. Fochmann, Martin & Hemmerich, Kristina & Kiesewetter, Dirk, 2016. "Intrinsic and extrinsic effects on behavioral tax biases in risky investment decisions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 218-231.
    9. Martin Fochmann & Joachim Weimann, 2013. "The Effects of Tax Salience and Tax Experience on Individual Work Efforts in a Framed Field Experiment," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(4), pages 511-542, December.
    10. Fu, Qiang & Ke, Changxia & Tan, Fangfang, 2015. "“Success breeds success” or “Pride goes before a fall”?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 57-79.
    11. Kessler, Judd B. & Norton, Michael I., 2016. "Tax aversion in labor supply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 15-28.
    12. Herbst, Luisa & Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2015. "Endogenous group formation in experimental contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 163-189.
    13. Avram, Silvia, 2015. "Benefit losses loom larger than taxes: the effects of framing and loss aversion on behavioural responses to taxes and benefits," ISER Working Paper Series 2015-17, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    14. Emanuela Lezzi & Piers Fleming & Daniel John Zizzo, 2015. "Does it matter which effort task you use? A comparison of four effort tasks when agents compete for a prize," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 15-05, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    15. Fochmann, Martin & Wolf, Nadja, 2019. "Framing and salience effects in tax evasion decisions – An experiment on underreporting and overdeducting," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 260-277.
    16. Hoffmann, Magnus & Kolmar, Martin, 2017. "Distributional preferences in probabilistic and share contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 120-139.
    17. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    18. Curtis R. Price & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2015. "Endowment Origin, Demographic Effects, and Individual Preferences in Contests," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 597-619, September.
    19. Martin Fochmann & Johannes Hewig & Dirk Kiesewetter & Katharina Schüßler, 2017. "Affective reactions influence investment decisions: evidence from a laboratory experiment with taxation," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(6), pages 779-808, August.
    20. Hörtnagl-Pozzo, Tanja & Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Oexl, Regine & Stracke, Rudi & Sunde, Uwe, 2023. "Heterogeneity in rent-seeking contests with multiple stages: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 105(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Taxation; Tournaments; Public good; Real effort experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:143:y:2016:i:c:p:64-72. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.