A Note on the Taxation of International Capital Income Flows

Seemingly persuasive arguments can be made to suggest that income from foreign-owned capital should be taxed by a small open economy and that it should not be taxed I show that the case for taxing foreign capital income as part of an 'optimal' tax scheme rests on the assumption that tax rates on other forms of income are not set optimally. In particular, if economic profit is not fully taxed, a tax on foreign capital income is desirable. If all tax rates are set optimally, foreign capital income should not be taxed by the capital-importing country.     

COMPETITIVE CONSIDERATIONS IN CABLE TELEVISION FRANCHISING

Franchising and renewing of franchises for cable television systems is an important urban policy issue. Of particular interest is whether franchise authorities ought to grant more than one franchise to provide cable service in a given area. This paper reports results of an empirical investigation into the cost structure of large, modern, urban cable systems. We find modest economies of scale in dimensions relevant to the feasibility of direct competition. The economies are not so large as to rule out the possibility that competition…whether direct or potential…can be an important disciplinary force in the marketplace.     

Corporate Governance: Factors Influencing Voluntary Disclosure by Publicly Traded Canadian Firms*

We report on the comprehensiveness of voluntary corporate governance disclosures in the annual reports and management information circulars of Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) firms. We focus on disclosure of the corporate governance practices implemented by our sample of TSE 300 firms vis‐à‐vis the 14 guidelines set out in the TSE's report on corporate governance Where Were the Directors? Our analysis indicates that only a very few firms disclose that they have fully implemented the TSE guidelines, and that the extent of disclosure of corporate governance practices implemented varies widely among the firms. We then test factors associated with the comprehensiveness of such disclosures and the choice of disclosure medium using simultaneous equations multivariate analysis. We also assess the influence of publicized corporate governance failures on disclosure. Overall, our results suggest that the choices of disclosure medium and the extent of disclosure are made concurrently, and are influenced by the strategic considerations of management.     

HEALTH INVESTMENT AND ECONOMIC OUTPUT IN REGIONAL CHINA

Using a 29‐year (1978–2006) panel of provincial‐level data from China, this article investigates the role of health capital in a human capital model of economic output. Robust evidence is found through panel cointegration analysis that health capital has a significant and positive effect on the Gross Regional Product in China; the effect being stronger in the inland regions compared to the coastal areas based on estimates that account for regional heterogeneity. This article highlights and discusses the potential role of diminishing returns to health investment in this globally important area. (JEL I15, R11, C23)     

A Conceptual Stress‐Coping Model of Factors Influencing Marketplace Engagement of Visually Impaired Consumers

Visually impaired consumers often suffer one of the worst marketplace stresses when processing product information. Despite there being around 314 million blind or visually impaired people worldwide, today's marketplace does not yet adequately address these stresses. This study develops and tests a theoretical model of how visually impaired consumers cope in marketplace engagement and discusses how companies and policymakers can help to increase marketplace engagement.     

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION

High technology investments are a rapidly growing segment of business capital expenditures. The questionnaire responses presented in this paper provide information on the capital investment decision processes currently being used for high technology projects. Respondents indicate that the capital evaluation techniques used to justify high technology investments are similar to those used for other types of capital projects and that high-tech projects must meet normal requirements for project acceptability. Respondents specified that a wide variety of factors, some quantified and some not quantified (such as quality control and reduced lead time), are included in their decision process. While there is general satisfaction with the procedures used for project justification, the relative newness of these investments suggests that there is a need to gather more detailed information about this type of capital decision.     

Optimal Constrained Interest-Rate Rules

We show that if policymakers compute the optimal unconstrained interest-rate rule within a Taylor-type class, they may be led to rules that generate indeterminacy and/or instability under learning. This problem is compounded by uncertainty about structural parameters since an optimal rule that is determinate and stable under learning for one calibration may be indeterminate or unstable under learning under a different calibration. We advocate a procedure in which policymakers restrict attention to rules constrained to lie in the determinate learnable region for all plausible calibrations, and that minimize the expected loss, computed using structural parameter priors, subject to this constraint.