Essays on Tax Behavior, Public Goods Provisions, and Income Poverty

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on civic tax behavior, public goods provisions, and poverty. First essay identifies indirect effects of corruption on individual tax morale which imply that corruption breaks the fiscal contract between government and taxpayers. Second essay examines the effects of ethnic institutions particularly ethnic fractionalization, economic heterogeneity among ethnic groups, and rising threats to White prototypicality on public goods supply in the USA. Third essay studies the puzzles of stagnating poverty amidst high growth and declining unemployment in the USA can be explained significantly by polarized job markets that occurred in job quality and job distribution.