The Crime of Tax Evasion in Transition Economies

Abstract

Frequent government changes, often bringing reversals in ideological orientations, forced agents in economies in transition to make economic decisions without knowing whether their next government would be more or less benevolent, democratic, corrupt, or able and willing to pursue economic growth. We present a model of agents facing the uncertainty of two future forms of government, who are able to insure against this uncertainty by opting out of the legal part of the economy. They opt out through a criminal act, specifically, hiding funds from taxation. In order to choose whether or not to steal, agents need to know what each government would do should it come to power. But each government, before it could make its decision, would need to know the choices of the agents who would, for example, produce tax revenues. This informational tension is resolved endogenously. We derive the resulting crime level in society and the optimal choices made by the potential governments. We examine how changes in governmental structure would affect the crime level, and how that, in turn, would affect capital flight.