European Journal of Law and Economics

The empirical study of Russian Personal Income Tax (PIT) evasion proves the existence of middle-class high-income groups able to finance the state but which lack a sufficient tax compliant attitude. The size of their income almost functionally positively correlates with tax evasion preferences. Within the flat rate the largest contribution to the general evasion in terms of hidden income comes from the middle-class groups and not from the richest Russians or the upper-middle class. The flat 13% PIT rate compared to the US IRS progressive schedule, both in case of absence and presence of tax evasion, is less favorable in terms of budget revenue and social justice. It is concluded that a positive outcome of flat rate introduction can be only achieved if the tax discipline of 10% of the richest citizens improves considerably. If the tax evasion preferences of the population remain the same, the introduction of a flat rate will hinder budget revenue and tax contribution redistribution.

Article 16 of the Greek Constitution stipulates that higher education is provided free in state institutions, and that private universities are prohibited. The paper digs into the historical origins of such provisions and discusses the reasons why, in spite of national outcry, the article has survived with no revision since it first appeared several decades ago. Closely linked to article 16, is the fact Greece has a world record of students studying abroad relative to its population. Standard economic analysis is used to assess the net social cost to the country of maintaining article 16. Links are made to the quality of university education provided by the state institutions, the foreign exchange drain to universities abroad, the lack of the benefits of competition by not allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in Greece, as well as the benefits of having foreign-educated graduates returning to Greece. The above efficiency arguments are complemented by distributional considerations on who has benefited, or lost, by the free state provision of university education.

Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff is widely regarded as the ‘founder’ of early economics in Germany, of Cameralism. Having survived the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War and the resulting economic, political, and moral breakdown of society, Seckendorff conceived of a holistic science of public administration fit to reconstruct the more than 300 independent German principalities recognized by the Peace of Westphalia. The science he envisioned was both theoretical and practical, covering all the needs of a small principality. The same union of active and contemplative characterizes Seckendorff’s own life, as he devoted himself both to administrating the Court of Gotha and the University of Halle, both to write an “owner’s handbook” to small principalities and one of the most celebrated defenses of Lutheranism. This introduction will explore how these many facets came together in the figure of Seckendorff, what his main influences were, and how the historical context helped shape his writings.

Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626–1692), one of the earliest proponents of Cameralism, sought to rebuild the German states after the Thirty Years’ War through a variety of new policies, including achieving a high degree of economic autarky. Writing at a time when trade wars and ‘visible hands’ were the order of the day, Seckendorff, like many of his contemporaries, sought to develop domestic productive capacity to escape an excessive and debilitating dependency on foreign powers. His 1665 Additiones to the Teutscher Frsten-Staat in particular, written after a visit to the economically thriving Dutch Republic, shows how his embryonic Cameralism sought to adapt the clearly observable mechanisms of economic growth in the Low Countries to the peculiarities of the German social and political context.

This essay narrates chronologically the life of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), arguably the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant, and an important figure in the development of thought about the state and its tasks as well as about the national economy. It is the first longer biographical sketch of Wolff in English, other than skeletal encyclopedia entries, since 1934, and the first original English one since 1910. Special attention is paid to Wolff's formal honors, academic calls, salary questions, and the political, historical, and academic background, and particularly to his ennoblement, as Wolff may well have been the first scholar to receive such a high Imperial recognition on the basis of his scholarly work alone.

Hansen's dissertation (1996) is an impressive, highly valuable, and thorough study on the problems of income taxation in Germany. These problems were also extensively discussed in Dutch economic literature around 1900. Several authors took part in the discussion, and some were also involved as politicians. They are referred to as the Dutch School in public finance. The discussions in the Netherlands were of a distinctive character as far as the tax rate (progression) is concerned. With regard to the tax base (the concept of income) there is in the case of the reform of the income tax in 1915, via in particular Treub, close affinity to that thinking in Germany, that is so eminently analyzed by Hansen.

The 19th century has seen some large codifications, several of which such as the Code de Napoleon of 1804 and the German Civil Code of 1900 have shown remarkable longevity. This article deals with the economists' influence on the German Civil Code of 1900. It is argued that the economists played an important role in re-shaping the Code, that this was even a concerted effort, and that Otto von Gierke's legal doctrine proved to be particularly viable for the introduction of economic ideas into legal reasoning.

The purpose of this essay is, first, to suggest Ragnar Nurkse as a Law & Economics thinker, and second, yet more importantly, to demonstrate the possibility and desirability of a Law & Economics of Development along Nurksean lines. Ragnar Nurkse (1907–1959), whose 100th birthday is celebrated in 2007, is one of the founding fathers of classic development economics. Given the recent interest in the Law & Economics of development, showing how a classic figure in the field successfully used such an approach might be of considerable interest, especially as development economics is a very emotional field which may well profit from the ‘objectivizing’ function of Law & Economics. Nurkse’s economics-based realism, his focus on what effect a program really has, rather than what it is supposed to have, and on what a policy can steer or change and what not, based on a typically Stiglerian attention to aggregate welfare, seem especially productive. Finally, the essay suggests a set of Nurkse-based principles or theses for a Law & Economics of Development.

Franz Bhm''s criticisms of codetermination (1951) are placed in their historical context. The article seeks to explain why Bhm''s arguments ultimately proved not to be correct under the specific German historical circumstances.

This paper empirically assesses the effect of socio-economic and demographic variables on violent crime in the United States. Using national-level time-series data over the period 1960-2000, I estimate an unrestricted vector autoregressive (VAR) model individually for overall violent crime, murder, rape and assault. The results indicate that there is no long-run relationship among the examined variables, but a significant short-run relationship holds. Imprisonment growth, income inequality, alcohol consumption, and racial composition of the male youth population are shown to influence the short-run behaviour of violent crime.

We estimate the effects of competition and regulatory policies on prices and real sales in Sweden during the period 1976–1990. We find evidence supporting the hypothesis that prices were higher on average in those markets affected by horizontal collusion, and therefore lower real sales. Market concentration and lower foreign trade are significantly associated with higher prices. We also observe how prices (output) tend to rise (fall) around cartel formations and fall (rise) around cartel termination as theories of cartels suggest. KeywordsCartels–Regulation–Panel data analysis

Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat, published in 1896, laid the intellectual foundations for the future state of Israel. His hope was to create for the Jews of Europe a country where they could live without suffering discrimination and deprivation of vertical mobility. This article focuses on Herzl's views of the means and ends of creating the social overhead capital or infrastructure of such a future country. A century ago, before Herzl, the strategic role of the public goods in the economic development process had not been sufficiently recognized.

We examine the Laffer effects of the policy of social security tax reduction cum partial deregulation of labour market undertaken in Italy in the period 1997–2001. Laffer effects of tax cut are generally delayed and governments responsible of the reform cannot benefit from the resulting increased revenues when in office. Our empirical findings show that tax cuts combined with policies of liberalization determine almost immediate Laffer effects. In terms of coherent supply-side political programs, the effects of the two measures are not separable. Reflection on our results may broaden the scope of the supply-side policies of deregulation and detaxation.

During the Greek War of Independence (1821-1827) from the Ottomans - which had a nationalistic and liberal character - and for the first decades after the liberation, a number of liberal French-educated politicians and scholars attempted unsuccessfully to introduce the Napoleonic Civil Code (or some clone of it) as the Greek Civil Code. Despite the fertile political and intellectual ground for such an introduction, they failed to achieve their goal due to the 'temporary' introduction of Justinian's Roman law as the Greek civil law. This led the Greek academic community to the Pandektenrecht and the predominance of the 19th century German legal theory (boosted by its organized propagation on the part of a number of German-educated legal scholars).