GBP Submission Module
Die Folgenden Forschungsprojekte wurden für die Aufnahme ins GBP Submission Module vorgeschlagen:
| Description: | Tax perceptions are well-known to determine the economic behavior of individuals. Little is known on firms’ tax-related perception. We quantify firms’ tax-related perception using survey data of German firms. |
| Most important question: | Wie hoch schätzen Sie die Ertragsteuerbelastung (in %), wenn Ihr Unternehmen ein Jahresergebnis vor Steuern i. H. v. XXX € erzielen würde? |
| Authors: | Martin Fochmann, Vanessa Heile, Hans-Peter Huber, Ralf Maiterth, Caren Sureth-Sloane |
| Pre-analysis plan | missing |
| Pre-registration | missing |
| Description: | Previous experiments have shown that (even slight) differences in the design of invitation letters result in discrepancies of starting rates between the respective groups. While previous applications relied upon A/B testing, this projects intends to use a form of Thomson Sampling in testing a variety of different survey invitation letters. |
| Most important question: | We do not include a question in the survey – room is scarce. |
| Authors: | Johannes Gaul, Davud Rostam-Afschar, Thomas Simon |
| Pre-analysis plan | see below |
| Pre-registration | Gaul, Johannes, Davud Rostam-Afschar and Thomas Simon. 2022. “How to cold call firms? An application of multi-armed bandit optimization in corporate web surveys.” AEA RCT Registry. July 26 |
| Description: | We study whether firms manage their earnings using experimental methods in a survey of 1,000 firm representatives in Germany. Financial reporting rules give firm decision makers (some) flexibility in the way they present information allowing to manipulate figures deliberately and actively according to their own objectives. Especially in economically difficult times, decision makers of capital market-oriented firms have to trade-off the promises made by management on the one hand and the expectations of external capital providers on the other. The classical earnings management literature studies whether, how, and why decision makers take advantage of their reporting discretion and what the economic consequences of such behaviors are. The prevalence of earnings management, however, is difficult to quantify since archival data is silent on the decision-making process. Survey evidence is controversial too, mainly because the very nature of this practice is to mislead some company’s stakeholders about the economic performance of the company and there is little hope that participants respond truthfully. We address this problem by designing a Double List Experiment (DLE), introduced in Droitcour et al. (1991). |
| Most important question: | Unternehmen sehen sich regelmäßig einem Zielkonflikt ausgesetzt: Auf der einen Seite sind gesetzte Ergebnisziele zu erreichen, auf der anderen Seite entwickeln sich die wirtschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen anders als zu Periodenbeginn geplant. Unternehmen treffen verschiedene Maßnahmen, um die Ergebnisziele auch bei veränderten Rahmenbedingungen zu erreichen. |
| Authors: | Jannis Bischof, Yuhan Liu, Davud Rostam-Afschar |
| Pre-analysis Plan | See below |
| Pre-registration | Link to pre-analysis plan: Bischof, Jannis, Yuhan Liu and Davud Rostam-Afschar. 2022. “Corporate Financial Reporting: Experimental Evidence and Economic Implications.” AEA RCT Registry. July 26. |
| Description: | In this project we will examine the current degree of tax functions’ digitalization in German firms and examine its association with the tax functions’ costs. In addition, we will investigate the drivers of tax digitalization processes. |
| Most important question: | What is the current state of tax functions’ digitalization in German firms and how is the degree of digitalization associated with the firms’ (planned) costs? |
| Authors: | Isabell Euler, Simon Harst, Karoline Maier, Deborah Schanz, Davud Rostam-Afschar, Johannes Voget |
| Pre-analysis plan | missing |
| Pre-registration | missing |
| Description: | This project aims to provide evidence on the incidence of taxes on the profits of companies. By exploiting experimental variation in the assignment of hypothetical permanent tax increases and decreases, we examine the symmetry of profit tax incidence and whether it is sensitive to the size of the tax change. |
| Most important question: | Assume: Your company has a permanently lower profit tax burden by (1%/10%/25%) due to a tax cut.
How do you distribute the additional funds? |
| Authors:
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Richard Winter, Philipp Dörrenberg, Fabian Eble, Davud Rostam-Afschar and Johannes Voget |
| Pre-analysis plan | proposal_form_tax_incidence.pdf |
| Pre-registration | missing |
| Description: | We study attitudes of firm-decision makers towards taxes using unique large-scale survey experiments representative for Germany. Starting from the hypothesis that businesses desire to lower taxes, we test how attitudes towards a 130 billion Euro fiscal stimulus and desired tax rates change, when subjects are confronted with two treatments highlighting social responsibility, fiscal responsibility, compared to a control group. We find that highlighting fiscal responsibility increases opposition against the state intervention and that the desire to reduce taxes diminishes but find no such effect when highlighting social responsibility. Firm-decision makers want to reduce taxes their firm has to pay stronger compared to taxes their firm does not have to pay. Managers are more willing to pay higher taxes, when agreeing with the fiscal stimulus. The harder the firm was hit by the Covid-19 crisis, the stronger the desire to lower taxes. |
| Most important question: | From your company’s point of view, by how many percentage points would you want to adjust the following types of taxes based on your current tax rate so that the government is able to support companies in crises? |
| Authors: | Laura Arnemann, Florian Buhlmann, Philipp Dörrenberg, Fabian Eble, Christopher Karlsson, Davud Rostam-Afschar, Johannes Voget |
| Pre-analysis plan | see below |
| Pre-registration | https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/6117 |
| Paper | TRR 266 Working Paper No. 125 |
| Description: | Using a randomized survey experiment, we investigate how firms’ inflation expectations shape their price setting. We establish that firms fully pass through inflation expectations to prices in times of high inflation, consistent with Calvo pricing. When informed about central bank inflation forecasts, firms indicate significantly lower planned price increases than their untreated peers. Additionally, treated firms pass through less of their pre-treatment inflation expectations than control-group firms, even more so when additionally receiving central bank forecasts on energy and labor cost developments. Hence, communication of inflation forecasts can shift expectations and prices, and therefore serve as an effective policy tool. |
| Most important question: | Compared to today, how do you plan to adjust the selling price of your main product or service in the next 12 months (in %)? |
| Authors: | Philipp Dörrenberg, Fabian Eble, Christopher Karlsson, Davud Rostam-Afschar, Benjamin Tödtmann, Johannes Voget |
| Pre-analysis plan | see below |
| Pre-registration | https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/9793 |