Gideon Yaniv - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Gideon Yaniv

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2012

A widespread meal-serving system commonly blamed for contributing to the obesity epidemic is the ... more A widespread meal-serving system commonly blamed for contributing to the obesity epidemic is the all-you-can-eat buffet, where customers can help themselves to as much food as they wish to eat in a single meal for a fixed entry price. The paper offers a rational-choice model for addressing the individual's eating dilemma in an-all-you-can-eat buffet, incorporating the motivation of getting-one's-money's-worth as a behavioral constraint on eating. Contrary to previous findings, the model reveals that the individual will not necessarily overeat beyond the point of fullness and will not necessarily increase eating in response to a higher entry price. An experiment conducted in collaboration with a sushi restaurant supports this conclusion. The paper further shows that a fat tax imposed on both buffet and a-la-carte meals will not affect buffet eating, hence subjecting all-you-can-eat buffets to the fat tax program need not be counter-effective as the literature results imply.

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2022

The economic literature has only recently drawn attention to the possibility that in the absence ... more The economic literature has only recently drawn attention to the possibility that in the absence of sufficient inducement, rational employers might not comply with the minimum wage law, since compliance negatively affects profits. The present paper reviews some theoretical aspects of the noncompliance decision and examines empirically the relationships between the extent of noncompliance in Israel and a number of explanatory variables, based on observations collected from the nine major economic sectors for the years 1988-1994. A preliminary step for the empirical investigation is, of course, the measurement of noncompliance. Although the Minimum Wage Law in Israel has contributed to increasing compliance in comparison with the ‘minimum income’ agreement that preceded it, the findings show that only about half of the urban employees entitled to receive the minimum wage actually receive it. ______________________ *Correspondence to: Gideon Yaniv, National Insurance Institute 13 Weitz...

Very often tax collectors initiate an audit on the basis of observed spending capacity that does ... more Very often tax collectors initiate an audit on the basis of observed spending capacity that does not seem to conform with declared income. This requires the skillful evader to carefully consider his or her expenditures on conspicuous consumption to avoid drawing the attention of the tax collector. The present article develops a simple model of the taxpayer’s joint evasion-consumption decision that is used to reexamine the widely discussed relationship between tax evasion and the income tax rate. Contrary to the literature’s counterintuitive result, the article shows that an increase in the income tax rate will unambiguously increase the taxpayer’s level of evasion. Furthermore, given that taxpayers vary in their level of true income, a tax rate increase will increase the number of tax evaders as well, consequently increasing the total amount of taxes escaping the tax collector. A related model of boasting about tax evasion is shown to yield some similar results.

The paper argues that welfare fraud and welfare stigma, apparently two phenomena of opposite natu... more The paper argues that welfare fraud and welfare stigma, apparently two phenomena of opposite nature, may be modeled with the aid of a single apparatus, thus allowing a comparative investigation of participants’ take-up of welfare benefits. Focusing on public exposure stigma generated through excessive reporting or work requirements in welfare programs, it is shown that under fairly reasonable conditions stigma will constitute a stronger deterrent to participation than the expected punishment on dishonest claiming (in both discouraging participation and reducing its duration). This result (which is in line with sociologists’ contention that the threat of informal sanctions has much greater effect on behavior than the threat of legal sanctions) suggests that the truly needy could be more effectively assisted if less effort were directed towards the enforcement of reporting and work requirements, and more resources shifted to enforcing eligibility conditions and combating dishonest cla...

National Tax …, 1999

L. Introduction Empirical and experimental evidence suggests that advance tax payments may play a... more L. Introduction Empirical and experimental evidence suggests that advance tax payments may play an effective role in tax authorities' enforcement strategy. Cox and Plumley (1988, hereafter CP) found that voluntary compliance rates in the United States (defined as income ...

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice

Journal of Economic Psychology

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

Public Finance Finances Publiques, 1994

In his seminal article on the allocation of time to crime, Isaac Ehrlich (1973) derives five inte... more In his seminal article on the allocation of time to crime, Isaac Ehrlich (1973) derives five interesting theoretical results. He uses a state-preference diagram to derive one result, retreating to mathematics for deriving the remaining four results. This note shows that all five results can easily be derived from an alternative and simpler diagrammatical exposition that involves intersection of curves rather than tangency between curves. I am indebted to an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions

Economics Bulletin, Aug 25, 2003

Ghosts are economic agents who evade taxes by failing to file a return. Knowing nothing about the... more Ghosts are economic agents who evade taxes by failing to file a return. Knowing nothing about them, the tax agency is unable to track them down through audit strategies which are based on reported income. The present paper develops a simple model of the audit decision for a ghost−busting tax agency which bases its audit strategy on signals of prosperous living, such as ownership of high−quality housing. Ghosts have a preference for high−quality housing, but may opt to own houses of a lower quality so as to escape detection. The paper compares the optimal audit rules and net tax collection under signal and blind auditing of the non−declaring population, deriving conditions under which each strategy will dominate the other.

National Tax Journal, 1995