eprintid: 3609 rev_number: 19 eprint_status: archive userid: 6 dir: disk0/00/00/36/09 datestamp: 2016-12-22 10:10:55 lastmod: 2017-01-13 10:08:17 status_changed: 2016-12-22 10:10:55 type: monograph metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Belmonte, Alessandro creators_name: Dell'Anno, Roberto creators_name: Teobaldelli, Désirée creators_id: alessandro.belmonte@imtlucca.it creators_id: creators_id: title: Tax Morale, Aversion to Ethnic Diversity, and Decentralization ispublished: pub subjects: HB subjects: HN divisions: EIC full_text_status: public monograph_type: imt_eic_working_paper keywords: Keywords: Ethnic diversity, Decentralization, Tax morale, Risk-aversion. JEL Classification: J15, H26, H73 abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between individuals' aversion to ethnic diversity, the degree of fiscal and political decentralization, and tax morale. Our theory is based on the assumption that individuals are risk averse in contributing to the provision of public goods benefiting other ethnic groups, and threfore display a lower tax morale. We find scope for policy intervention-specifically, our model predicts that the effect of individuals' aversion to ethnic diversity on taxmorale is smaller or null in decentralized political and fiscal systems relative to centralized ones. The theory highlights the role of decentralization reforms to cut down inter-ethnic redistribution in con icting environments. We test our results by using individual data from the World Value Survey, and several decentralization measures from Fan et al. (2009). According to our most preferred estimation, a one-scale change in the attitude toward ethnic diversity reduces tax morale of 0.03 in centralized system. We rather find no impact in decentralized states. date: 2016-12 number: 7 publisher: IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca pages: 37 institution: IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca issn: 2279-6894 citation: Belmonte, Alessandro and Dell'Anno, Roberto and Teobaldelli, Désirée Tax Morale, Aversion to Ethnic Diversity, and Decentralization. EIC working paper series #7/2016 IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca ISSN 2279-6894. document_url: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/3609/1/EIC_WP_7_2016.pdf