发表机构
Toulouse School of Economics; Université de Rouen Normandie, LERN; ENS Paris-Saclay, CEPS（图卢兹经济学院; 鲁昂诺曼底大学，LERN; 巴黎萨克雷高等师范学院，CEPS）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。AI 中文总结
本文通过两期声誉模型研究政府高税收要求的模糊性，刻画三种体制，并分析核查对福利的影响，发现审计虽降低当前福利但改善未来配置。
AI 中文摘要
政府可能因为面临真实的支出而要求高税收。同样，一个意图将税收收入据为己有的政府也可能提出同样的要求。我们在一个两期声誉模型中研究这种模糊性，该模型包含私人可观察的支出需求和内生的税基。机会主义政府会在直接没收与诚实政府可能征收的税收之间进行选择。我们通过一个单一均衡方程刻画了三种可能的体制。合法需求的均值保留展宽会弱提高机会主义者的终身价值，并且当展宽改变与模仿相关的上尾时，这种提高是严格的。随后，我们给出了一个必要且充分的曲率条件，使得这一排序能够推广到一般的声誉延续收益。核查降低了隐藏的价值，但也改变了机会主义者攫取的方式。在基准经济中，更严格的审计会弱降低当前公民福利（即使在考虑审计成本之前），但通过更好的信息改善了未来的配置。因此，核查的福利论证取决于这两种效应之间的平衡。例子显示存在无审计、体制内最优以及体制边界处最优的情况。
英文摘要
A government may ask for a high tax because it faces a genuine expense. The same demand can also be made by a government that intends to keep the proceeds. We study this ambiguity in a two-period reputation model with privately observed spending needs and an endogenous tax base. The opportunist chooses between outright confiscation and levies that an honest government might impose. We characterize the three possible regimes through a single equilibrium equation. A mean-preserving spread of legitimate needs weakly raises the opportunist's lifetime value, with a strict increase precisely when the spread changes the upper tail relevant for mimicry. We then give a necessary and sufficient curvature condition for this ordering to extend to a general reputational continuation prize. Verification reduces the value of concealment, but also changes how the opportunist extracts. In the benchmark economy, greater auditing weakly lowers current citizen welfare, even before audit costs, while improving the future allocation through better information. The welfare case for verification consequently depends on the balance between these two effects. Examples yield no auditing, an optimum within a regime, and an optimum at the boundary between regimes.
