Tax design needs to balance considerations of economic efficiency, equity and enforceability Modern OECD economies have fundamental economic and social objectives that require public spending. This in turn must be financed mainly through taxation. However, because taxation inevitably impinges on most aspects of economic activity, careful consideration must be given to its design – in addition t...

Research on the effects of positional concerns on individuals’ attitudes and behaviour is sorely lacking. Therefore, using the International Social Survey Programme 1998 data on 25’000 individuals from 26 countries this paper investigates the impact of relative income position on facets of social capital, covering horizontal and vertical trust as well as norm compliance. Testing relative depriv...

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) may present some challenges for systemic and post-systemic therapists. EFT’s focus on the use of emotion in the room is off the map of many solution focused or narrative therapists. Also, its emphasis on attachment theory as the key to change can be a hurdle, especially for therapists unfamiliar with attachment theo...

The purpose of this article is to test whether the use of public participation by a local government increases perceptions of procedural fairness among the public and to propose an explanation for why fairness is a strong predictor of satisfaction with governmental decisions. To do this, we draw on the uncertainty management model to hypothesize that indications of procedural fairness can incre...

The poor favor redistribution and the rich oppose it, but that is not all. Social mobility may make some of today’s poor into tomorrow’s rich and since redistributive policies do not change often, individual preferences for redistribution should depend on the extent and the nature of social mobility. We estimate the determinants of preferences for redistribution using individual level data from...

The international community has developed multiple approaches to address large-scale human rights (HR) violations (e.g., genocide). In the current contribution, we first provide a review of different approaches to intergroup violence (AIVs), and explain how these approaches might (re-)establish HR consciousness and behavior in postconflict societies. We then integrate this literature with the H...

Economics has looked at the decision process of politicians but the decision process of agency staff has primarily been the purview of sociologists. Agencies affect the final form of regulations, they may enforce or ignore regulations that exist, and they provide information to the political process. Policies recommended by economists for nonpoint source pollution control are seldom supported b...

It’s just very pragmatic. You put twelve pretty smart people in a windowless room in [some city] for two days and you expect them to remain sane. They’re pretty professional people, so they do their best. They have very different tastes so there’s a lot of potential for conflict. They stay cool-headed and they have to make these heroic efforts to agree across big disciplinary differences on wha...

Napier and Tyler (this issue) question whether moral convictions about outcomes really override the influence of procedural fairness (PF) on fairness judgments and decision acceptance. The empirical answer to this question is ‘‘yes.’’ When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, perceptions of outcome fairness and decision acceptance are primarily shaped by whether the morally ‘‘co...

Organizations (though the design of their employment application websites) have the option of prohibiting or allowing certain types of traditional applicant communications such as cover letters. However, while doing so may streamline recruiting processes, it may come at a price. This study hypothesizes that the opportunity to submit cover letters during a selection process should improve proced...