Complexity has been linked to the quality of an income tax system (Dean, Keenan, and Kenney [1980]), including its possible influence on the system's ability to generate revenues (New York State Bar Association [1972]). Given the IRS' recent estimate that $81 billion in annual revenue is lost through noncompliance (IRS [1983, p. 21]), the question of whether tax complexity has a significant effect on taxpayers' reporting positions is a potentially important issue. Complexity represents but one strand in a web of interrelated factors and propositions influencing compliant tax reporting in a democratic society. Nevertheless, it has been singled out as a factor affecting compliance and a study of its effect thereon can be viewed as one step in an ongoing program of study of noncompliance. This study involved two distinct phases. The first phase was devoted to obtaining operational definitions of tax complexity, using multidimensional scaling. These definitions of tax complexity were then used in the second phase of the study to test for potential effects of complexity on reporting position selections in four different tax situations. While phase 1 is critical to phase 2 of my study, this paper highlights the results of the latter. Details of phase 1 can be obtained in Milliron [1984]. In section 2 I discuss previous literature involving tax complexity. Section 3 provides an overview of the methodology and the research issues studied. Sections 4 and 5 describe the data collection procedures

In a multivariate regression model relating individual returns to the market return, CAPM implies non-linear restrictions on the parameters. Several asymptotically valid tests of these restrictions have been suggested. The existing Monte Carlo evidence shows that some of these tests are unreliable for reasonable sample sizes, but does not indicate well which tests are reliable. This paper reports the results of an extensive Monte Carlo experiment. Shanken's CSR test and Jobson and Korkie's corrected likelihood ratio test are quite accurate in all cases we consider.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of how job search requirements under various government programs influence job search behavior. The analysis indicates that job search requirements exert a significant impact on certain aspects of the job search process, but not those that generally lead to a higher probability of employment. It is also found that persons who utilize intensively search activities that result in direct employer contact have much shorter durations of unemployment than persons who do not utilize such activities intensively. It is speculated that altering job search requirements to include more direct employer contact could lead to a significant reduction in unemployment.

Changes in the Japanese financial system over the coming decade will play a significant role in the functioning of U.S. financial markets and, indeed, of the entire U.S. economy. From World War II through at least the mid–1970s, the United States was a major exporter of investment capital in the form of foreign direct and portfolio investment. More recently, low U.S. savings rates, recurring federal budget deficits, reduced sovereign lending by U.S. banks, and, possibly, high real returns on domestic investment have combined to make the United States a major importer of capital. At the same time, large trade surpluses and very high savings rates in Japan have more than offset increases in government borrowing to make Japan the world's principal capital exporter, a position it is likely to hold for some time. These are fundamental changes.

This paper presents a dynamic, choice-theoretic general equilibrium model of capital accumulation in an open economy. Equilibria with and without capital mobility are described and compared. It is shown that neither is necessarily Pareto optimal and that an equilibrium with free trade in capital does not Pareto-dominate an equilibrium with autarky. The effects of restricting capital flows by taxing foreign investment earnings are discussed. It is seen that there will be no agreement within a country as to what constitutes an optimal tax. 1.

Accounting research, Citations, Contemporary accounting research

The Cotton South has always lagged behind the rest of American agriculture in the use and development of large-scale machinery. This paper formalizes an idea often found in the historical literature in loosely specified form which argues that the institutional structure of the southern plantation economy caused this technological inertia. In particular, the Institutional Hypothesis argues that the annual labor contracts used to secure plantation labor discouraged partial mechanization and inventive activity by redirecting the impact of higher labor costs away from the development and adoption of labor saving machinery and toward the adoption of small unmechanizable tenancies. This hypothesis is modeled, and supporting evidence is presented. Its larger implications are also discussed.