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Comments - The weapon against more tax evasion
Rewarding the honest
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 28/08/2011
For teachers exams are a sad ritual in search of hidden notes and of new tricks to pass the test without studying. When a course is particularly led to these malpractices the first and natural reaction of the faculty is to increase controls and harsh punishments. I too have fallen into this temptation, but I learned that the main, if not the only, effect one gets is a double failure: it creates a crime atmosphere in the classroom and all students work badly, and the "copying professionals" always find more sophisticated systems that circumvent the controls while the average student falls in tighter controls, because now even a harmless look at the neighbor’s desk is punished.
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Last year I happened to teach Economics at a prestigious foreign university and I discovered that the exams were "open book." Obviously I had to develop a more structured exam but I'm even more convinced that the best way to increase efficiency and fairness in any system involves the right design of institutional mechanisms. Tightening controls and sanctions in my exams, with the best intentions and without wanting it I sent a strong message to my students: "you are basically dishonest and unfair," a message that frustrated the intrinsic motivation of good students and unleashed the imagination of the few unfair students to the point of wanting to prove that they were more cunning than me.
I believe there is a link between this experience and the debate against tax evasion which is in progress in Italy today. The first step for a real tax reform is to rethink the design and overall logic of the tax system: returning to the school metaphor, to switch from "note hunting" to "open book exams," where appropriate incentives are given to citizens to demand their own and others’ transparent transactions, allowing, for example, families to have less expenses and a more appropriate rate than the present ones.
A second element of a serious tax reform should begin with the realization that even if we were to sanction all bakers, bartenders, craftsmen and professionals who do not issue receipts and invoices (which is obviously necessary), there exist a mega tax and ethical issue for large companies and individuals who have registered offices and homes in tax havens, and easily exchange enormous wealth in international financial markets evading taxes (just see the reactions to the Tobin tax proposal or the taxation of Credit Default Swaps (CDS)), perhaps of pending future amnesties. Without a serious fight against these macro fiscal scandals, we can also close down some activity that does not issue a receipt (an appropriate thing in itself, especially when it comes to freelancers or medical professionals with villas and SUVs), but we would do the grave error of who treats the tooth decay of a patient and neglect to care about a tumor: treat well the tooth decay (which is very painful when inflamed: the dental metaphor is purely coincidental), but let us also remember of the tumor.
But there's more. In 1766 Giacinto Dragonetti, lawyer from Aquila, Italy, published a book entitled "On Virtues and Rewards," not by chance two years after the publication of the famous "On Crimes and Punishments" by Cesare Beccaria. In Dragonetti’s Introduction, it reads: "Men have made millions of laws to punish crime, and they haven´t established even one to award virtue," and therefore proposed to his Kingdom of Naples to give life to a true and real "Code of Rewards" which would accompany the "Penal Code," based on the extraordinary intuition that a country cannot develop if, while punishing the dishonest, it does not reward the virtuous citizens. It is true that an indirect way to reward the honest is to punish adequately the opportunists and the cunning ones, and today Italy also needs this. But we must bear in mind one of the lessons of economic science: the laws are mostly symbolic signals and messages, and those that are based on anthropological hypothesis that humans by nature are dishonest and opportunists ultimately produce opportunists and dishonest citizens. A tax reform that aims to be efficient and equitable must rely primarily on virtuous and law-abiding citizens that, we must not forget in these hard times, are always the vast majority of the population, including the Italian one, because if the opposite were true the common life would implode in the space of one morning. It is therefore the foundation of a healthy people that must be mobilized for a tax reform, with credible signs of confidence, esteem and gratitude. The biggest failure of a tax reform would be to further ruin the relationships between citizens, bringing them to look at colleagues and neighbors as dishonest and potential tax evaders, and not as valuable allies in the common construction of the city.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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Comments - The weapon against more tax evasion
Rewarding the honest
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 28/08/2011
For teachers exams are a sad ritual in search of hidden notes and of new tricks to pass the test without studying. When a course is particularly led to these malpractices the first and natural reaction of the faculty is to increase controls and harsh punishments. I too have fallen into this temptation, but I learned that the main, if not the only, effect one gets is a double failure: it creates a crime atmosphere in the classroom and all students work badly, and the "copying professionals" always find more sophisticated systems that circumvent the controls while the average student falls in tighter controls, because now even a harmless look at the neighbor’s desk is punished.
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Avvenire Editorial - Europe, now at the crossroads, must be able to show the way
Listen to young people, choose well
The Tobin Tax lost for 10 years
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 19/08/2011
The Tobin Tax is not a new idea but it is a significant and important idea, which has only a defect of being late. In this case, it is worth an old African proverb: "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, but if you have not done it the best time is now."
A dynamic phase of the debate on this tax was the one that broke out around the year 2000, within the youth movement that started from Johannesburg which culminated in Genoa in July 2001. Two months after the sad events in Genoa, there was the attack on the Twin Towers that completely shifted the attention of international public opinion and politics from the Tobin Tax and the governance of financial globalization to terrorism and wars. Thus began a period of "distraction" from issues of financial speculation from which we have awakened to the tragic crisis of 2008, when we realized that during our global distraction, in reality, the speculative finance without rules and controls grew and became hypertrophic, reaching the edge of an abyss.
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A first lesson to be learned from the history of recent years is therefore immediate but important: when young people are protesting together, in so many and on a global scale, often behind that protest, perhaps disordered and badly structured, hides an important question that must be heard beyond the partial or incorrect responses. If, in fact, we had listened, understood and made our own the questions that the young people posed to the world of economics and finance at the end of the last century, that is, a more attentive governance to the new dynamics of financial markets globalization, perhaps the crisis still in progress could have been avoided.
But to understand the meaning and purpose of a tax proposal at the time of Nobel James Tobin (one of the leading scholars of finance of all time, a figure that should already tell us something), it may be useful to recall the three main functions of taxes (and of taxations) in modern democracies.
The first is the most obvious and least controversial from the ideological point of view: financing and construction of public goods. The first function of taxes does not necessarily require special altruism or civic virtues, but only trust and hope that the vast majority the of other citizens are not tax evaders (a trust that we could also call today a virtue in Italy), but it is essentially a coordinated cost in order to produce goods that require contributions from all (security, infrastructure…).
The second function is the classic income redistribution: the taxation becomes an instrument of social solidarity and fraternity which says, with facts, that a people is also a community with a common good to ensure and protect, and may be based also on a form of self-interested rationality (as explained to us by philosopher John Rawls) when we think about the disadvantaged of the future could be us or our children.
The third function, the least known and remembered, which is to encourage the good called "meritorious" (or of merit) and discourage "demerit" good. Little or less goods, considered useful, are taxed for the common good (culture, education…) and more tax on those goods that in reality are "bad" (tobacco, hard liquor…). In this last case, taxes act as direct consumption of ethically sensitive people in areas where values are at stake in the general interest.
Normally, taxes play one or the other of these three functions and are very rare that they happen all together: the Tobin Tax is just one of them. In fact, to bring order and stability to financial markets today means to create a kind of public good that is of great value even economically. The redistributive effect is obvious, if they will use, as seems obvious, the revenue to build infrastructure, health and education in developing countries. Finally, financial speculation presents aspects of demerit goods, because the excessive risk that these tools create is downloaded from private entities, creating the typical "tragedy of the common good."
The critical challenge is to adopt such a tax at the maximum possible global level, as the field of finance is the world’s. As mentioned in other interventions, the legislation can only be global if it wants to be truly effective and not divert resources to other markets. In addition, the tax application must be associated with a serious fight against the scandal of tax havens, a reality in which we will have a hard time explaining its existence to our children without blushing of shame.
But even if only Europe could adopt the Tobin Tax I am convinced that it would be a great sign of civilization, which would benefit not only civil society but also the markets themselves, who need democracy and rules that will last. Europe has been home to modern economics and finance, has been able to invent these institutions and instruments which have been made big and made possible the development and democracy for billions of people, a beacon for humanity of the last centuries. Today Europe is faced with a choice: follow the short-term logic and the vested interests, and therefore leave the status quo of a financial market which today is not free because of the large ransom money, or give a sign of civilization with a courageous choice in line with its great history and its deep, and still alive, humanistic and Christian roots.
All of Luigino Bruni's comments on Avvenire can be found under Avvenire Editorial.
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Avvenire Editorial - Europe, now at the crossroads, must be able to show the way
Listen to young people, choose well
The Tobin Tax lost for 10 years
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 19/08/2011
The Tobin Tax is not a new idea but it is a significant and important idea, which has only a defect of being late. In this case, it is worth an old African proverb: "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, but if you have not done it the best time is now."
A dynamic phase of the debate on this tax was the one that broke out around the year 2000, within the youth movement that started from Johannesburg which culminated in Genoa in July 2001. Two months after the sad events in Genoa, there was the attack on the Twin Towers that completely shifted the attention of international public opinion and politics from the Tobin Tax and the governance of financial globalization to terrorism and wars. Thus began a period of "distraction" from issues of financial speculation from which we have awakened to the tragic crisis of 2008, when we realized that during our global distraction, in reality, the speculative finance without rules and controls grew and became hypertrophic, reaching the edge of an abyss.
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Editorial - Debt and Financial hypertrophic
The Deadly Embrace
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 7/08/2011
The downgrade, expected by the markets, of the U.S. rating by Standard & Poor's from AAA to AA + (first time in history), adds a tile to the mosaic that is  being compose these days. We do not yet have a clear picture of what is happening to our economic system, but what we can now have a glimpse of is that we are facing the biggest crisis of the capitalist system, a crisis that began in the fall of 2008, still in full swing, not knowing whether how and when it will end.
The collapse in the autumn of 2008 revealed a new fact: it is no longer possible to separate the real economy from finance, since in the era of globalization the real economy is also financial, a crisis in financial markets is also a real crisis (employment, GDP), and vice versa. That is why this crisis is also a failure of economics and of us economists (including Obama's advisers) for using outdated tools to describe the world and suggest recipes.
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But the storm we are experiencing these days is telling us something new: it is no longer possible to separate the economy from the geo-politics and from the policies of individual states. Among the collapse of financial markets, Obama's political problems and the affairs of the Italian government, the weakness of the European political system is their close relationship that one cannot find where the Market ends and where Politics begins. We will be able, then, to come out of this momentous crisis only if we learn together to look at finance, economics and politics in a systemic manner and in a global perspective but very attentive regionally (see Greece). Finance grew up as a good plant that, in the absence of pruning and care, is invading the whole garden.
Today, the annual volume of securities traded in financial markets far exceeds (between 8 and 10 times) the world's GDP, a volume that in the last 15 years has increased by more than 40 times. The question we must ask ourselves, including the experts,  is why we have witnessed this inert and bloated hypertrophic growth of speculative finance, without stopping from time to time to assess, at various levels (economic, political, social, ethical) if the path embarked in the nineties were taking us on impassable and dangerous trails.
This hypertrophy of finance narrows in a deadly embrace with the exorbitant private and public debt of the economically advanced world of economy. We must never tire ourselves of repeating that the problem of this crisis is excessive debt, private (in 2008) and public (now), due to large bailouts of banks and funding of expensive wars.
If we do not reduce the average debt of the West (and of Japan, another patient) we will not emerge from this crisis. Also because in these days where everyone talks about growth we must keep in mind that the capitalist economy has already grown bad in the past twenty years (thanks to financial innovation), with serious environmental and social consequences. The growth rates of years prior to 2008 cannot be proposed again, both for economic reasons (no question), but also and above all for ethical and environmental reasons. Otherwise we would discover the error of those who have diabetes that try to increase the physical activity, while continuing to eat sweets as before the diagnosis: we seriously care about globally changing the way of life and making sacrifices, an ancient and unpopular word, but always crucial when history becomes serious.
The individual and collective crises are always ambivalent: we can come out better or worse, and the outcome depends mostly on us, from our view of the world. A deadly mistake to avoid during crises is to not take seriously the signals that come from outside. Financial markets should not be demonized, they are telling us something important. First of all we have underestimated the crisis in countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland: structural and global financial crises are very serious things, even if they are of small states, because it can be a child who shows that the king (the euro) is nude.
A second signal-message that is coming from this crisis is the urgent need for serious and deep reforms, especially on pensions and reduced waste in public administration. Reforms that require a national policy still does not see beyond the partisan differences: this lack of responsibility is grave, because the moment we are experiencing is perhaps the most serious after the season of terrorism. Finally, this crisis will be a happy fault if it will make us give birth to a market economy other than the hyper-financial capitalism we have created, because we are paying the increases in economic well-being with the coin of vulnerability and insecurity of all but especially the most vulnerable (people and countries).
That's why we must all follow with great attention and responsibility what happens in these days: the fate of financial markets and the holders of securities are not the only ones involved, but the quality of the market economy that will emerge from this crisis, and therefore freedom, rights and democracy.
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Editorial - Debt and Financial hypertrophic
The Deadly Embrace
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 7/08/2011
The downgrade, expected by the markets, of the U.S. rating by Standard & Poor's from AAA to AA + (first time in history), adds a tile to the mosaic that is  being compose these days. We do not yet have a clear picture of what is happening to our economic system, but what we can now have a glimpse of is that we are facing the biggest crisis of the capitalist system, a crisis that began in the fall of 2008, still in full swing, not knowing whether how and when it will end.
The collapse in the autumn of 2008 revealed a new fact: it is no longer possible to separate the real economy from finance, since in the era of globalization the real economy is also financial, a crisis in financial markets is also a real crisis (employment, GDP), and vice versa. That is why this crisis is also a failure of economics and of us economists (including Obama's advisers) for using outdated tools to describe the world and suggest recipes.
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Comments – To understand and deal with the crisis
A Jubilee for Italy
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 24/07/2011

In these days, there have been warning signs after another of speculative attacks, alternating with that of relaxation and optimism. In reality, we must be aware that the situation is serious, and we must equip ourselves as country and as Europe to address a phase that could prove no less difficult and lengthy than that of the autumn of 2009. In fact,  the crisis that we are experiencing in these days is much more of a contagion phenomenon (of the Greek and/or Portuguese crisis): it is a structural fragility crisis of Italy and Europe. The illness is serious and yet it is neither a deadly disease nor a simple flu. It is a second mini-stroke that if it does not produce a change in lifestyle it can lead to fatal consequences.
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In the interval between the two crises Italy the “patient” has continued to behave as before, except for a few afternoon stroll or a few pills, but without any strong sign of a turnaround.
There are at least three elements to propose as diagnosis and a possible treatment. The first element for a correct diagnosis has to do with demography. We will never understand well what is happening if we do not start from a given structure and long-term period: Italy, more than other European countries, has in the recent years radically decreased the relationship between the active and the retired population, parallel to the sharp increase of life expectancy.
The entire state welfare system was based on a much lower life expectancy (and even more on youths who worked), which allowed the young generation to sustain the burden of pensions. In addition, the family, which was the true center of our state welfare (much more of the state or the market), can no longer perform its duties of care and nurturing. If we do not quickly act not only for a pension reform but a new intergenerational deal, the public debt cannot be reduced.
The public debt is, in fact, the second element of the diagnosis: speculation hits Italy because the huge public debt makes the periodic signing of government bonds indispensable, nothing less. Hence the request, in times of frailty even politically, of increasing returns of our bonds. The public debt is the real sword of Damocles of the current crisis.
The third element deals with Europe, namely the absence of a political reality behind the euro. The project of the founding fathers of Europe was primarily a political one. History tells us that a currency is strong when it is supported by (and expresses) a political power. The management uncertainties of the Greek crisis are very important signs, since they say that in addition to business interests of euros in Europe there is too little: the forces of financial markets know it and target those that are more fragile. Without a new political deal, a European constitution and strong institutions (and agile: one must reduce also the costs of European bureaucracy), the euro will not hold for long.
Today, the therapy that everyone suggests is the revival of the economic growth. It should be remembered that the insufficient economic growth is also a consequence of the first two elements, namely a country’s aged debt who cannot find the resources to grow. Economic growth requires many ingredients, all very essential: public investments (especially in education and research), creativity, innovation and, above all, enthusiasm and passion for the people. Today Italy certainly lacks resources for public investments but lacks even more the enthusiasm and the desire for life. To understand what this enthusiasm is, it is enough to a tour Asia, the Middle East or Africa. On my last trip to Kenya, more than the material poverty, it struck me to see young people studying in the evening under the street lights: it is this hunger for life and future that tomorrow can defeat the hunger for food and give life to development and prosperity. If today Italy and Europe do not find this enthusiasm, no finance can revive the growth because our politicians and public opinion systematically forget the greatest lesson of social sciences of the twentieth century: the growth and development of a country does not depend mainly on the action of the government but by the daily behaviors of millions of citizens, each of which has, and he alone, that piece of information and knowledge relevant to social and economic action.
Of course, among these economic agents there are also the government and institutions (which can and must do their co-essential part), but have much less power than they tell us every day (even to justify their presence and related costs). The solution to the economic crisis can be found outside the economic sphere: one can find it in the civilian life, the desires and the passion of the people, which are springs that feed also the economic life. One does not go to work every morning to reduce public debt, but to pursue projects and dreams. We are also able to make great sacrifices only if we catch a glimpse of a bigger collective project, capable of moving the heart and actions to rekindle enthusiasm. We have been able to do them many times in the past, even recently, why not now? However, each one of us should use well that piece of knowledge and power on the reality of which it is related to, use the talents well, undertake more and better. But for this game to function there is a need of rite and public liturgies, symbols of force, art, beauty, solemn and collective acts. In particular, I am convinced that today there is an dire need of a sort of jubilee, in the biblical meaning of the term: a season of mutual forgiveness, of reconciliation and of peace, to forget all the malice and poisoning of each other of which we are capable of in these twenty years both in the political class in the country and to look forward together. Today Italy is in a state of welfare very similar to “war of everyone against everyone” of which Hobbes talks about. We do not have to get out of it and continue the civic and economic decline; we can get out of it creating a Leviathan, the monstrous crocodile that is also part of the history and the DNA of the Italians. But we can get out of this poverty and economic trap by re-launching a new era of civic virtue and a new deal, the only ground that has generated and generates creativity, enthusiasm and love of life, from which the economic growth will flourish.
© All rights reserved
see a comment of Pierluigi Porta
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Comments – To understand and deal with the crisis
A Jubilee for Italy
by Luigino Bruni
published on Avvenire on 24/07/2011

In these days, there have been warning signs after another of speculative attacks, alternating with that of relaxation and optimism. In reality, we must be aware that the situation is serious, and we must equip ourselves as country and as Europe to address a phase that could prove no less difficult and lengthy than that of the autumn of 2009. In fact,  the crisis that we are experiencing in these days is much more of a contagion phenomenon (of the Greek and/or Portuguese crisis): it is a structural fragility crisis of Italy and Europe. The illness is serious and yet it is neither a deadly disease nor a simple flu. It is a second mini-stroke that if it does not produce a change in lifestyle it can lead to fatal consequences.
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Editorial
By Luigino Bruni
Published on "Agorà", a column in Avvenire, on 5/02/2010
"Italy built at home" (Mondadori), by economists Alberto Alesina e Andrea Ichino, is a book full of important data, on which it would be good to reflect, perhaps to reach "policy" conclusions which are different than those proposed by the authors. The book´s thesis is that the underdevelopment of the Italian economy is mainly cultural underdevelopment. They attribute this to our tradition of family, which causes a great percentage of women to carry out domestic work, and so, work too little "outsite of the home", in the market.
This said, here´s their recipe: reduce taxes on income of working females in order to create incentives so that women will work more. It cannot be denied that today, in Italy, the assymetry of professional development opportunities is significant between men and women. It is also true that legislative, economic and social intervention that facilitate female workers to enter the market, and that therefore help balance out the weight they carry at home, are not only opportune. They are necessary and urgent. From this point of view, then, this book can play an important role in nourishing a debate about civilization that has never been more relevant. But this implies a cultural vision that sees strong ties, especially in the family and in the community, as the main social burden of Italy and Mediterranean culture compared to the more economically and civilly developed Nordic countries.
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There are also affirmations that tend to tone down this radical thesis, but in general, the pitch of the paper remains coherent to its main idea: if we are capable of abandoning the model of the Italian family and imitating Norwegian and Danish social models, we´ll finally become a post-modern, democratic, richer, and perhaps happier country. This thesis is not convincing, not only because this great "Nordic" happiness does not exist, but most of all because it lacks an idea of family as a collective subject. For the authors, family is essentially the sum of separate individuals. They don´t see relationships but individuals. That´s the origin of their critique of the proposed "quoziente familiare" (literally, family quotient), which will not tax couples as individuals but as part of a family unit and while keeping in mind the number of children they have. "If we hold that the participation of women in the workplace is an important objective for our country, it is evident that the method of the family quotient distances us from this objective, and separatetaxation would be preferable". Separate taxation sees a couple as an unjoined man and woman; but family is above all a pact that makes two unjoined people a collective subject, in which decisions are discussed and then taken together, including working decisions. Raising and educating a child, especially in his or her first years of life, is not the private business of the parents or of the mother. It´s not a "good" like transportation or housekeeping that can be bought and sold efficiently only by asking for it or offering it. Today, the best economic theory recognizes this, when it considers the family as producer not only of services but also of "relational goods" (which are goods, but not merchandise), and when it shows (as does Nobel winner Heckman) that the first years of life are those on which the even the economic success of people are most based. Before any kind of economic and fiscal reform on the Italian family, the family must be recognized as a great resource and civil patrimony, and only then can its problems be addressed.
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    [text] => 
Editorial
By Luigino Bruni
Published on "Agorà", a column in Avvenire, on 5/02/2010
"Italy built at home" (Mondadori), by economists Alberto Alesina e Andrea Ichino, is a book full of important data, on which it would be good to reflect, perhaps to reach "policy" conclusions which are different than those proposed by the authors. The book´s thesis is that the underdevelopment of the Italian economy is mainly cultural underdevelopment. They attribute this to our tradition of family, which causes a great percentage of women to carry out domestic work, and so, work too little "outsite of the home", in the market.
This said, here´s their recipe: reduce taxes on income of working females in order to create incentives so that women will work more. It cannot be denied that today, in Italy, the assymetry of professional development opportunities is significant between men and women. It is also true that legislative, economic and social intervention that facilitate female workers to enter the market, and that therefore help balance out the weight they carry at home, are not only opportune. They are necessary and urgent. From this point of view, then, this book can play an important role in nourishing a debate about civilization that has never been more relevant. But this implies a cultural vision that sees strong ties, especially in the family and in the community, as the main social burden of Italy and Mediterranean culture compared to the more economically and civilly developed Nordic countries.
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