More Facts about Prices: France Before and During the Great Recession

Using microprice data, we document new facts on price rigidity in France: (i) each month 20.1% of prices are changed, which compares to 24.1% in the United States—excluding sales, however, the fraction of prices modified each month is about the same in France and in the United States (around 17%); (ii) the distribution of price changes is quite dispersed; (iii) the frequencies of price increases and decreases contribute a lot to inflation variations, and price increases are more frequent in January (even when sales are excluded); (iv) sales contribute significantly to the volatility of inflation but play a minor role in the transmission of macroeconomic fluctuations to prices; and (v) during the Great Recession patterns of price adjustment were only slightly modified.     

Price Stability in Economies with Habit Persistence

This paper shows that the divine‐coincidence does not hold in a sticky price model with external habit if a time‐varying tax rate on labor income is not implemented to fully eliminate the time‐varying distortions associated with external habit and monopoly power in goods market. The required labor income tax rate is inversely related to the risk‐free real interest rate and the markup in the goods market, but it is proportional to the degree of external habit. Under this circumstance, the optimal monetary policy commands a countercyclical interest rate, having a perfect negative correlation with tax rate in the sticky price model with external habit. If a time‐invariant tax is the only fiscal instrument, then the degree of external habit entails a gap between the private marginal rate of substitution between consumption and labor and the social marginal rate of substitution, generating an endogenous trade‐off between the stabilization of welfare‐relevant output gap and inflation. Under this circumstance, price stability is not the optimal policy. The monetary policy authority should optimally try to undo the time‐varying distortions associated with external habit and monopoly power in goods market by deviating from price stability.     

Determinants of tax haven utilization: evidence from Australian firms

This paper examines the major determinants of tax haven utilization based on a sample of 200 publicly listed Australian firms, over the 2006–2010 period (1,000 firm‐years). Our regression results show that variables relating to transfer pricing, intangible assets, an interaction term between transfer pricing and intangible assets, withholding taxes, performance‐based management remuneration and multinationality are positively associated with tax haven utilization. We also find that corporate governance structures are negatively associated with tax haven utilization. The magnitude and significance of the regression coefficients indicate that transfer pricing, withholding taxes, intangible assets, an interaction term between transfer pricing and intangible assets, corporate governance and multinationality are the most important drivers of tax haven utilization.     

我国油气资源税由从量计征改为从价计征的政策效应——基于双重差分法的计量分析

基于双重差分法,对西部地区油气资源税由从量计征改为从价计证的政策效果进行评估,以单位产值能耗、污染排放量和人均资源税收入作为政策效果变量,实证研究表明,油气从价税改革促使西部地区单位产出能耗相对于样本均值下降了7.90~8.55个百分点,污染排放量减少约1556吨,人均资源税收入相对于样本均值增加了2.74~3.03个百分点,通过采用不同处理方法进行稳健性检验后,以上结论仍然成立。     

碳交易与碳税机制比较研究

碳税和碳交易作为主要的碳减排政策工具被大多数重视碳减排的国家所采用。基于对比碳税与碳交易在理论基础、效果成本、减排效果、监督机制以及未来适应性等方面的差异,结合两种政策的执行现状和中国国情,中国应建立碳排放交易与适度碳税相结合的复合政策,降低碳排量,以应对日益凸显的环境问题。     

Taxes and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Linguistic Cues

Using a new measure of financial constraints based on firms’ qualitative disclosures, we find that financially constrained firms—firms that use more negative words in their annual reports—pursue more aggressive tax planning strategies as evidenced by: (1) higher current and future unrecognized tax benefits, (2) lower short‐ and long‐run current and future effective tax rates, (3) increase in tax haven usage for their material operations, and (4) higher proposed audit adjustments from the Internal Revenue Service. We exploit the unexpected closures of local banks as exogenous liquidity shocks to show that firms’ external financial constraints affect their tax avoidance strategies. Overall, the linguistic cues in firms’ qualitative disclosures provide incremental information beyond traditional accounting variables or commonly used effective tax rates to reveal and predict tax aggressiveness, both contemporaneously and in the future.     

企业社会责任导向下我国物流业税收政策研究

基于企业社会责任观,认为我国当前物流业的相关税收政策在引导企业履行社会责任方面存在差距,要使我国物流业健康、快速、长久地发展,物流业税收政策的设计要引导企业履行经济责任、法律责任、道德责任和慈善责任四个社会责任层次,通过对现状和问题的分析提出了政策设计的导向和措施。     

Automatic stabilizers in the Japanese tax system

When studying the role of taxes as an automatic stabilizer, excluding the effects of discretionary tax reform is troublesome. A fruitful approach to identifying tax movements over business cycles would be to utilize cyclical information. From this perspective, we exploit wavelets in order to characterize the automatic response of taxes to output at business cycle frequencies in the postwar Japanese economy. We find the presence of automatic stabilizers in the Japanese tax system under the influence of relatively high output volatility but the absence of such stabilizers during the period of the “Great Moderation” in Japan in the 1980s.     

谈我国中央与地方政府间税权配置的进一步改进

本文从介绍政府间税权配置的基本原则及中央与地方政府间税权配置的基本模式出发,认为目前我国中央与地方政府间在税权配置上仍存在着许多问题。为了更好地实现政府间“事权与财权”的相对统一,有必要对我国中央与地方政府间的税权配置做进一步的改进。     

我国奢侈品税的政策效应分析

2006年4月,中国调整了消费税税目,将部分游离于消费税之外的奢侈品纳入了课税范围,其目的在于调节贫富差异,促进社会公平。究竟能否达到政策目标,由于改革时日尚短,缺乏足够的数据资料,难以进行实证检验。因此,本文主要从经济学理论方面进行分析和探讨,预期在中国当前的现实状况下,奢侈品税不仅难以缩小贫富差距,相反,还很有可能遏制国内新兴产业的发展。