In Norway, tax returns have been made public.
Alex Tabarrok asks:
Perhaps most interesting–does conspicuous consumption fall and efficiency increase in a society in which income is conspicuous?
An interesting variation on this is: Can we find evidence for people declaring more than what they truly earn so that the neighbours comment on it (reverse tax fraud).
He drives a really old car, but, in fact, he makes a ton on family income alone. I guess he just doesn’t want us to know. You know, old money doesn’t show off.
Probably this effect would be higher in the lower tax-brackets!
(I don’t know how to test for this based on that data, however.)
