欧洲银行联盟的设想、争论及前景

2012年以来,欧洲银行联盟作为欧洲应对欧债危机的重要举措被提出,并在几个月内取得显著进展,但目前,围绕欧洲银行联盟作用及相关制度设计还存在较多争论与分歧。文章详细回顾了欧洲银行联盟设想的细化与改进过程,以及各方对重大争议问题的相关看法,指出欧盟各国将会努力推动银行联盟建设,但由于涉及问题的复杂性和艰巨性,银行联盟建设只能分步进行,其长期作用有待观察。     

Turkey's accession to the European Union

Turkey's accession to the European Union is often discussed by posing the simple question of whether it should be admitted. Polite legal discussions will quickly point to the Copenhagen criteria for admission of a state to the Union. Less polite discussion will raise issues regarding whether the whole state can be characterized as a religious state, and a Muslim state at that, whether there is independent government interest beyond the military and religious interests and whether more than 2 million Turks already living in the European Union give Europe any idea of what it might be like to have Turkey admitted in its entirety. In the end, this author concludes that given all of these obstacles, perhaps the most telling question to be asked is why Turkey has been invited in the first place.     

欧洲银行业联盟评述

2013年7月10日,欧盟委员会就银行“单一处置机制”发布新方案。这标志着欧洲银行业联盟继续向前推进。然而,前进之路不会太平坦,仍有许多障碍需要克服。     

Financing Retirement in the European Union

This paper explores how EU countries can address various challenges (including the aging of the population) affecting their systems of old-age income support. It presents two scenarios illustrating the most important uncertainties surrounding the major developments that affect the pension systems of the EU. To diversify these risks, EU governments should act on several fronts. In addition to the formation of human capital (especially that of children), employment (especially that of older workers) should be boosted. This calls for social insurance reform with more emphasis on individual saving schemes. Pension schemes should be more explicit about how they share demographic and other risks. Countries that currently rely heavily on public pay-as-you-go (PAYG) schemes should stimulate private pensions by gradually reducing PAYG benefits collected by high-income earners, by issuing new financial instruments, and by conducting intergenerational risk sharing through the tax system.     

Broadband development in the European Union to 2012—A virtuous circle scenario

Along with many national governments, the European Commission has pushed broadband to the fore of social and economic policies in recent years. It has aligned broadband developments with furthering information society and knowledge economy developments.This paper presents a positive scenario for broadband-related developments in the European Union area from 2009 to 2012. The scenario, the iNetWorked Society, is one of four developed in an extensive multi-country project funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme.Before examining the scenario, however, the paper places into a critical perspective the EU's legacy of broadband policy to date. It highlights the limitations of technology-centred policy frames and broadband strategies, which privilege supply-side infrastructure and neglect demand-side issues of applications, uses and users. Such policy frames have been associated with great variations in the level of broadband rollout, take-up and use across Member States.The paper then outlines the socio- and macro-economic conditions that need to be in place in Europe for the positive scenario of the iNetworked Society to be realised. The iNetWorked Society comprises a plausible, internally consistent scenario for developments in a number of broadband-related areas: broadband adoption, e-business, e-work, e-government and digital content. It is based on a virtuous circle of technological, economic and socio-political developments, including strong economic growth, high broadband penetration, and high social engagement with ICTs.     

A proposal for a new basis of life insurance calculations in Norway

Abstract

The basis used by Norwegian life insurance companies for the calculation of premiums and reserves is, as regards insurances, The Institute of Actuaries Life Tables H ^M (20 British Life Offices tables) with interest at 4 per cent. This basis has been used by Norwegian companies for more than thirty-five years and has proved entirely safe.     

Company Tax Reform in the European Union

The European Commission recently proposed to move towards a consolidated tax base for European multinational companies, to be allocated across EU member states through a system of formula apportionment. This paper argues that while the Commission's blueprints for company tax reform may reduce existing problems of transfer pricing, they will also create new distortions as long as existing tax rate differentials are maintained. The paper also investigates the changes in international tax spillovers which will occur as a result of a switch from the current system of separate accounting to formula apportionment. The final part of the paper discusses whether more conventional corporate tax harmonization should still be a long term policy goal for the EU and presents quantitative estimates of the efficiency gains from harmonization.     

The distribution of earnings relative to targets in the European Union

This paper provides evidence on the distribution of reported earnings relative to targets in the Member States of the European Union (EU). For a large sample of over 60,000 firm-years between 1986 and 2001, we find that more firms than expected (i) report small positive earnings, (ii) report small positive earnings changes and (iii) have zero or small positive forecast errors. These discontinuities are much more pronounced in the EU compared to the US, and the distributions of reported earnings and earnings changes are characterised by lower dispersion and more clustering around zero, consistent with higher income smoothing in Europe. Across the EU, we find that the avoidance of a loss or an earnings decrease is more common in those Member States which do not have a long history of accounting standard setting, and particularly in those which, until recently, were almost entirely law-based. The earnings distributions and earnings change distributions of UK firms resemble more those of their counterparts in the US. and differ from the rest of the EU. despite the various EU harmonisation efforts that have taken place.     

Alcohol taxation and regulation in the European Union

This article surveys alcohol consumption, taxation and regulation in the European Union (EU). It uses the estimates of cost-of-illness studies to gauge the external costs of harmful alcohol use. In all but one member state, the costs exceed alcohol excise duty collections. An optimal alcohol excise is difficult to design, because the welfare gains from a reduction in socially costly heavy drinking must be balanced against the welfare loss from a fall in moderate drinking. This suggests that while an alcohol excise increase may be efficiency improving, complementary regulatory measures, which focus on specific problem groups, should be an important element of the policy package. A case can also be made for reducing wasteful cross-border shopping by raising the minimum duties on wine, beer and spirits, preferably in line with their relative alcohol content.      

The future of Turkey in the European Union

Turkey's future in the European Union (EU) is a subject of intense debate both in Europe and in Turkey today. Although Turkey first applied to join the EU 45 years ago, it is the only candidate country, which has not yet started accession negotiations. On the one hand, any future enlargement that includes Turkey is a controversial topic for the EU, since Turkey would be the only Muslim member in the EU, which has accepted 10 new members in May 2004. On the other hand, it is too late to exclude Turkey from the future of the EU since it has put the issue of the EU accession at the top of its national agenda and is the only candidate country that has completed the Customs Union with the EU. This article aims to explore future scenarios regarding Turkey's inclusion to or exclusion from the EU and assess their short and long term implications.     

Restructuring Financial Regulation in the European Monetary Union

This article argues that present financial regulatory arrangements within the European Monetary Union are not adequate either to preserve stability or to foster financial integration. Reform of financial regulation should concentrate on establishing clear procedures for crisis lending and management, with the European Central Bank at the center; preparing the ground for more centralized supervisory arrangements in banking, insurance, and securities; and establishing and consolidating an active domestic and European Union-wide competition policy that limits local market power and national champions that are too big to fail.     

Dividends and share repurchases in the European Union

We examine cash dividends and share repurchases from 1989 to 2005 in the 15 nations that were members of the European Union before May 2004. As in the United States, the fraction of European firms paying dividends declines, while total real dividends paid increase and share repurchases surge. We also show that financial reporting frequency is associated with higher payout, and that privatized companies account for almost one-quarter of total cash dividends and share repurchases. Our regression analyses indicate that increasing fractions of retained earnings to equity do not increase the likelihood of cash payouts, whereas company age does.     

Exploring Formula Allocation for the European Union

This paper explores the efficiency impacts of two methods of consolidated base taxation with formula allocation under consideration in the European Union. The first method, common (consolidated) base taxation (CCBT), would allow companies to choose a single tax base for their EU-wide operations. This tax base would be common throughout the participating member states. The second method, Home State taxation (HST), would also allow companies to choose a single tax base for their EU-wide operations. But, unlike with CCBT, the tax base would be defined according to the rules in the company's residence, or home, state. Thus, several different tax bases would exist within the EU. Both methods would use a common formula to distribute profits across countries. This paper finds that since countries continue to set corporate income tax rates, economic inefficiencies continue to exist under both methods. However, under HST, since the tax base differs according to residence, additional inefficiencies may arise depending on whether countries reduced their tax rates to combat the incentive for companies to relocate to locations with narrow tax bases.     

Determinants of M&A success in the European insurance industry

This research analyzes the success of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for European acquiring insurers using a stock market perspective. In contrast to previous papers that use an event study approach, our analysis is based on the stochastic dominance methodology, in which we analyze short and long term capital market reactions following an M&A announcement. In addition, we examine firm- and transaction-specific determinants associated with superior M&A success. Using a sample of 102 European insurance M&A transactions over the period 1993–2009, our results indicate that acquiring insurers are second-order dominated by their benchmark portfolio in the short term. In the long run, we find no evidence of stochastic dominance compared to their non-acquiring counterparts. Moreover, we find that geographically diversifying acquirers are rewarded by the market, and that transactions in which the acquirer and target have a business relationship before the M&A announcement outperform transactions without pre-M&A participation in the short-term. Finally, we detect a positive relationship between cash payment and acquirers’ M&A success.     

Sweden: A member of the European Union but without the Euro

The integration of the EU-member countries continues. An important step of this process was the introduction of the common currency, the Euro coins and bank notes in year 2002. During a time of incidents and events last year, Swedes made up their minds and declined the Euro favouring the Swedish krona in the referendum on 14 September 2003. This is a story about a small EU-member state that still needs time to integrate.     

Governmental Accounting in Spain and the European Monetary Union: A Critical Perspective

During the last twenty-five years, the changes in Spanish accounting have been radical and significant, especially since 1986 when Spain joined the European Union. Those changes were first introduced in business accounting, following the patterns of the Fourth Directive, but governmental accounting has also been affected by structural reforms that have modified the financial reporting system, the accounting standards and the accounting principles to be applied. However, the governmental accounting system needs further improvement, particularly given the EMU framework and the relationship between governmental accounting and national accounting.     

How Much Tax Coordination in the European Union?

This paper examines the trade-offs between tax autonomy and fiscal neutrality that the Member States of the European Union face in coordinating their taxes on consumption, labor and capital. One of the main messages is that in many cases tax reform should precede tax harmonization, mainly because the costs of distortions within Member States may be greater than the gains from reducing intergovernmental tax competition.