Over the past decade, the European Union has been characterized by an explosion of expenditure, insufficient revenue, high deficits and a lack of budget discipline. Financial markets in Europe are currently dealing with enormous government debts, poor government balance sheets and a weakening banking system. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the origins of the current Euro-crisis and specifically identify the extent to which it will affect the nation of Italy going forward. To understand Italy's stance amid the Euro-crisis, we proceed as follows: First, a historical background section will develop the fundamental issues that have developed in Europe over time leading to the current situation. Next, a discussion about Italian economics and politics will identify Italy's central policy issues placed in the context of the Euro-crisis. Subsequently, Italy's issues with tax evasion will be covered illustrating its history and enforcement addendums going forward. The final section of this paper will present a forward-looking prediction about the fate of Italy and the Euro-zone and will include some of the necessary steps toward avoiding an international economic collapse.

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The relationship between earnings management and tax manipulation has been discussed in academia recently. We contribute to this discussion by using a list of tax evader companies, to test the relationship. The list was supplied by the Swedish Tax Agency and consists of public companies from the Swedish stock exchanges. Our findings show that tax evader companies are more prone to manage their earnings and that they do it by reporting small earnings. The effect of labelling the companies as tax manipulators does also not change the extent that they manipulate their earnings in the future. There is therefore no disciplinary effect from the tax evader fine on a manipulating company to behave more credible in the future. Out of our results the most unexpected was however that when we compare the NASDAQ companies with the ones listed on less liquid stock exchanges the NASDAQ ones were more pervasive in managing their earnings. This goes against our own hypothesis as well as previous literature and shows that investors have to be careful also when investing in premium markets.

Chapter 1 studies the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in Italy which used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. The difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. Local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood as a consequence of the policy. In addition, these political returns are higher in areas with higher speed of public good provision and with lower tax evasion tolerance, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, government efficiency, and the underlying tax culture. Chapter 2 uses a road-level regression discontinuity design in Sierra Leone to study the impact of improvements in rural road infrastructure on agricultural markets. We show that the improved roads reduced the market prices of local crops. These price effects are stronger in markets that are further from major urban centers and in less productive areas. We also find that these price effects are reversed in areas with better cell phone penetration. We show that our empirical findings are consistent with a search cost framework a la Mortensen, but inconsistent with other models, such as Bertrand competition, bilateral bargaining, and Cournot oligopsony. Chapter 3 present results from a randomized controlled experiment designed to study the multiple margins through which value is passed from traders to agricultural producers in the presence of interlinked transactions. Consistent with other studies, we find limited price pass-through in response to an increase in the trader resale price. However, there is a large response in credit provision. We develop a model of interlinked transactions that highlights the substitutability of price and credit pass-through across markets, and verify its predictions empirically. Calibration suggests that to ignore margins of pass-through other than price has substantial implications for welfare analysis. / Economics

Chapter 1 evaluates the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. We implement a "difference-in-discontinuities" design by combining the before/after with the discontinuous policy variation generated by the implementation of the Domestic Stability Pact on Italian municipalities between 1999 and 2004. Our estimates show that relaxing fiscal rules triggers a substantial deficit bias, captured by a shift from a balanced budget to a deficit that amounts to 2 percent of the total budget. The deficit comes primarily from reduced revenues as unconstrained municipalities have lower real estate and income tax rates. The impact is larger if the mayor can run for reelection, the number of political parties seated in the city council is higher, voters are older, the performance of the mayor in providing public good is lower, and cities are characterized by historical deficit, consistently with models on the political economy of fiscal adjustment. Chapter 2 studies the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in Italy, which used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. The difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. After the policy, local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood. These political returns are higher in areas with higher speed of public good provision and with lower tax evasion tolerance, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, government efficiency, and the underlying tax culture. Chapter 3 examines reasons for cross-country variation in maternity leave provision. We show that the less tolerant a society is of gender-based discrimination, the longer the maternity leave it will optimally mandate. We collected new data on the number of gender-differentiated personal pronouns across languages to capture societies' attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. We first confirm, using within-country language variation, that our linguistic measure is correlated with attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. Then, using cross-country data on length of maternity leave we find a strong correlation between our measure of attitudes and the length of maternity leave. / Economics

This thesis traces the history of Conscientious Objection and draft evasion from the introduction of the Universal Male Conscription system in 1949 to the end of the authoritarian dictatorship period in 1993. I especially focus on the persecution and stigmatization of religious Conscientious Objector groups such as the South Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists. The negative labeling of these Conscientious Objectors as social deviants is part of an initiative led by the South Korean state to solidify Universal Male Conscription as a social norm. This process was supported by the implementation of a national surveillance system as well as the intensification of a nation-wide crackdown on draft evasion, which was viewed indifferently from Conscientious Objection. Thus, this project reveals the ostracization of Conscientious Objection as well as the normalization of Universal Male Conscription as an interconnected issue that came to be perpetuated throughout South Korean History.

This thesis traces the history of Conscientious Objection and draft evasion from the introduction of the Universal Male Conscription system in 1949 to the end of the authoritarian dictatorship period in 1993. I especially focus on the persecution and stigmatization of religious Conscientious Objector groups such as the South Korean Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists. The negative labeling of these Conscientious Objectors as social deviants is part of an initiative led by the South Korean state to solidify Universal Male Conscription as a social norm. This process was supported by the implementation of a national surveillance system as well as the intensification of a nation-wide crackdown on draft evasion, which was viewed indifferently from Conscientious Objection. Thus, this project reveals the ostracization of Conscientious Objection as well as the normalization of Universal Male Conscription as an interconnected issue that came to be perpetuated throughout South Korean History.

Un auteur a dit: «L'association d'idée avec la girafe se présente immédiatement à l'esprit, en donner une définition est difficile, mais chacun reconnaît l'animal». Tel est le cas pour la notion de contrat international qui apparaît souvent comme évidente, mais lorsqu'il est question de donner une définition précise la tâche s'avére complexe. L'internationalité du contrat a fait l'objet de plusieurs études et recherches dans le but de délimiter cette notion. La doctrine et la jurisprudence ont élaboré deux méthodes de qualification: économique et juridique; sans pour autant définir le contrat international de façon nette, claire et précise. Le but visé par cette étude est d'essayer d'établir le lien entre la possibilité de fraude à la loi et la problématique de la définition du contrat international; par le biais d'une étude comparative entre le droit civil (français, québécois, tunisien), la common law (Royaume-Uni, Canada, États-Unis), le droit dans les pays à commerce d'État et le droit conventionel. / One author said : «L'association d'idée avec la girafe se présente immédiatement l'esprit, en donner une définition est difficile mais chacun reconnaît l'animal». This is the case for the notion of international contract, whose definition is often presumed to be self-evident, but in reality constructing a precise definition is a very complicated task. The international nature of a contract has been the subject of many studies and much research has been dedicated to this topic, aIl with the goal of formulating a clear definition. Legal doctrine and jurisprudence have succeeded in qualifying international contract as legal or economic without actually defining it in any constant, clear or precise manner. The aim of this study is to make an attempt at establishing a link between possible evasion of the law and the problem of defining international contract; this will b e a chieved v ia a comparative s tudy of c ivill aw (France, Quebec, Tunisia), common law (United Kingdom, Canada, United States) law in countries where the economy is state-run and international treaty law. / "Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures En vue de l'obtention du grade de maîtrise en droit"

Mokesčių planavimas, kaip finansinio planavimo dalis, yra teisėta ir skatintina mokesčių mokėtojų veikla. Mokesčių planavimas turi būti perspektyvus ir labai gerai apgalvotas, jo efektyvumas turi būti palygintas su išlaidomis, kurios patiriamos jį įgyvendinant, kad kaštai neviršytų “kompensacijos”. Mokesčių planavimą svarbu atriboti nuo mokesčių vengimo ir kitų neteisėtų mokesčių naštos sumažinimo būdų. / Tax planning, as a pat of financial planning, is legal and promoted practice of taxpayers. Tax planning shall be practicable, very thoroughly deliberated and calculated, the efficiency of tax planning shall be compared with expenses spent on implementation of tax planning, that cost would not exceed the reimbursement obtained during the tax planning procedures. Distinction shall be made between tax planning and tax evasion also other ways of illegal tax deduction.

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