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Tax evasion is an economic crime that nearly all world countries suffer from. Its consequences are countless, including poor public spending on infrastructure projects and social welfare programs, low economic growth and development, institutional mistrust and fiscal deficits. For developing countries in particular, targeting development programs and infrastructural investments requires an efficient tax collection policy to generate sufficient funds for such purposes. This makes the tax evasion problem a critical one and countering it extremely policy relevant. Based on evidence that shows how the understanding of taxpayers' behavior is an essential factor in fighting evasion, this paper aims to test different factors that might incentivize citizens using a behavioral and experimental approach, in non-Western educated industrialized rich democracies (non-WEIRD) countries, to comply more.

This paper uses a survey experiment to examine the impact of different behavioral primes on tax compliance behavior. Specifically, it observes subjects' compliance behavior in two contexts: voice and empathy. A total of 273 students from a big public university in Egypt were randomly selected to participate in this study.

In the “Voice” treatment, the explanatory variable (VOICE) was found statistically significant, thus confirming the hypothesis that democracy, through having a voice in the decision-making process, affects compliance positively. As for the “Empathy” treatment, the explanatory variable (EMPATHY) was also found significant. This confirms the second hypothesis that triggering feelings of empathy, through highlighting the good cause behind public spending that uses taxpayers' money, affects compliance behavior positively.

Despite the fact that the experimental methodology is a methodology with high internal validity, examining the impact of a specific intervention on behavior, a replication of the experiment in other contexts might be useful in increasing the external validity of the findings. Specifically, conducting this experiment on a nonstudent sample might lead to even more powerful results by increasing the ecological validity of the results.

This study advocates a more behaviorally informed public policy. Specifically, Egyptian policymakers are recommended to adopt behavioral nudges as a complement to existing policies. The authors believe the findings, if confirmed by repeated experiments (lab, lab-in-the-field and rational choice theories on both student and non-student samples) in a number of Arab countries, might also help in offering cost-effective nudges for the Arab world policymakers, where culture and the political context are to a great extent similar.

The findings of the study have a number of social implications. Higher tax compliance will enable higher levels of public spending on a number of social targets such as education, health and welfare programs.

While the study builds on recent research examining how to incentivize tax compliance, it simultaneously seeks to make three contributions. First, the study design aims to apply recent advances in behavioral sciences (impact of voice and empathy) in a policy area that has not seen much use of such interventions in the Egyptian context (i.e. tax compliance). Second, the study is policy relevant in the sense that it aims to increase the effectiveness of existing government policies by complementing them with behavioral primes. Third, there is nearly no literature found applying this topic in a non-WEIRD country such as Egypt.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between fiscal policy (tax revenues and government expenditure) and economic happiness. The panel data are used from 2012 to 2016 for 18 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The study adopted the Barro (1990) model of endogeneity growth to characterize the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness. The study estimated the model by using the pooled ordinary least squares method, the fixed effects method and the random-effects method. In addition, the study used the dynamic estimate of this relationship rather than the conventional static estimate through the generalized method of moments’ method. This leads to overcoming the endogeneity problem between the dependent variable and the independent variables.

The main findings indicated that there is a negative and statistically significant relationship between nondistortionary taxes and economic happiness. Also, there is no relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness, whether productive or nonproductive. The results confirmed a positive and significant relationship between other revenues and economic happiness. The current study recommended the diversification of other public revenue sources to increase its contribution to public expenditure financing and the restructuring of the tax system, particularly nondistortionary taxes. These taxes must be replaced by other revenues or by distortionary taxes to increase economic happiness.

The research represents a strong starting base that can help researchers to conduct more studies on economic happiness by using different measures and comparing their results to find out the determinants of happiness. The relationship between economic happiness and fiscal policy with its different aspects requires more studies, especially the relationship between taxes and economic happiness in our region. The study of the relationship between public expenditure and economic happiness according to economic activities can guide decision-makers to direct the expenditure toward economic activities that achieve the happiness of their citizens. Enriching this study requires the availability of fiscal data for the entire MENA region for longer periods, which allow us to divide the countries of the region into petroleum and nonpetroleum countries, but the scarcity of data is one of the limitations of the study.

The governments of MENA countries should diversify other public revenue sources to increase the financing public expenditure by the expense of tax revenues, especially nondistortionary taxes, which would increase the economic happiness of their citizens.

This study is one of the rare studies that investigate the relationship between fiscal policy and economic happiness at the global level. This study contributed to filling the gap of this issue in the MENA region and enriching global literature through the experience of the MENA region. Moreover, this study investigated all aspects of fiscal policy, in contrast to other studies that focused on one of its aspects. The weakness in these studies is because of the lack of correlation between the sources of revenues and the face of their spending.

This paper aims to present a preliminary experimental result on a large-scale experiment on a cyber-physical hybrid discussion support environment in a panel discussion session in an international conference.

In this paper, the authors propose a hybrid (cyber-physical) environment in which people can discuss online and also offline simultaneously. The authors conducted a large-scale experiment in a panel discussion session in an international conference where participants can discuss by using their online discussion support system and by physical communications as usual.

The authors analyzed the obtained date from the following three viewpoints: participants’ cyber-physical attention, keywords cyber-physical linkage and cyber-physical discussion flow. These three viewpoints indicate that the methodology of the authors can be effective to support hybrid large-scale discussions.

Online large-scale discussion has been focused as a new methodology that enable people to discuss, argue and make consensus in terms of political issues, social complex problems (like climate change), city planning and so on. In several cases, the authors found that online discussions are very effective to gather people opinions and discussions so far. Moreover, this paper proposes a hybrid (cyber-physical) environment in which people can discuss online and also offline simultaneously.

In the context of Portugal, this study examines the stereotypes of accountants held by laypeople and how they are influenced by financial crises and accounting scandals.

To better understand the social images of accountants, the authors adopt a structural approach based on the big five model (BFM) of personality. The authors test this approach on a Portuguese community sample (N = 727) using a questionnaire survey. The results are analyzed considering the socioanalytic theory.

The results suggest the existence of a stereotype dominated by features of conscientiousness, which is related to the superior performance of work tasks across job types. This feature comprises the core characteristics of the traditional accountant stereotype, which survives in a context challenged by financial scandals and crises. The findings highlight the social acceptance of accountants as an occupational group but do not suggest the possibility of accountants benefiting from the highest levels of social status when considered in relation to the traditional accountant stereotype.

By combining the BFM and the socioanalytic theory, this study provides a unique theoretical approach to better understand the social images of accountants. The findings demonstrate the suitability of using the BFM to study the social perceptions of accountants. They also indicate a paradox based on the survival of the traditional stereotype. This stereotype appears to be resistant to scandals and financial crisis, instead of being impaired, giving rise to another prototype with concerns about integrity.