EURATOM—Community in a crisis

The founders of the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) acted “In the conviction that only a concerted action … offers the chance to achieve a performance which corresponds to the creative forces of its members”. This sentence is still anchored in the treaty of the Community, but it seems to disapper from its activities. National egoism has oppressed stronger and much earlier than in the EEC the work of EURATOM. The dispute about the research programmes is followed by the quarrel over the finances. Lack of determination to make decisions and adherence to national competences are endangering the existence of the Community. We discussed with Dr Hellwig, who is competent in the EEC Commission for the sectors of energy, research and technology, the destiny of EURATOM.     

Industrielle Revolution(en): Transformationsprozesse des Kapitalismus

Wirtschaftsdienst - Against the backdrop of digitisation, the author focuses on the effects of process innovations, particularly with respect to employment. He exposes the technical and mental...     

Does intellectual property rights reform spur industrial development?

An extensive theoretical literature generates ambiguous predictions concerning the effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) reform on industrial development. The impact depends on whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) expand production in reforming countries and the extent of decline in imitative activity. We examine the responses of U.S.-based MNEs and domestic industrial production to a set of intellectual property rights reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Following reform, MNEs expand the scale of their activities. MNEs that make extensive use of intellectual property disproportionately increase their use of inputs. There is an overall expansion of industrial activity after reform, and highly disaggregated trade data indicate higher exports of new goods. These results suggest that the expansion of multinational activity more than offsets any decline in imitative activity.     

Why do firms hold so much cash? A tax-based explanation

US corporations hold significant amounts of cash on their balance sheets. This paper develops and tests the hypothesis that the magnitude of US multinational cash holdings are, in part, a consequence of the tax costs associated with repatriating foreign income. Consistent with this hypothesis, firms facing higher repatriation taxes hold higher levels of cash, hold this cash abroad, and hold this cash in affiliates that trigger high tax costs when repatriating earnings. In addition, less financially constrained firms and those that are more technology intensive exhibit a higher sensitivity of affiliate cash holdings to repatriation tax burdens.     

The Russian tax reform

In the years 2000 and 2001 the Russian parliament passed tax laws which revolutionised the tax system. The laws on both direct and indirect taxes were substantially altered—with the result that Russia today has a modern and internationally competitive tax system which may even serve as a model for tax reform in the industrialised countries of the West. The following article describes the old tax system, its evolution and its economic effects, outlines the main features of the new system, gives examples for the positive effects it has already had and, finally, makes some propositions for further reform.     

When Black Swans Aren't: On Better Recognition,Assessment, and Forecasting of Large Scale,Large Impact,and Rare Event Change

The article discusses professional best practice implications stemming from differing varieties of thinking about black swans. The possibilities of rare event recognition in general, and the conforming limits on the forecasting art that arise from different views of possibilities is addressed. In particular, assessing how different philosophical groundings partner with methodological and practice implications to shape and limit practice possibilities is highlighted. Opportunities for securing comparative advantages—individual, organizational, and societal—are revealed by introducing holistic methods for better recognizing, assessing, and managing emerging large scale, large impact, rare events thought by most people to be unpredictable black swans. To achieve this, the article uses mainstream model and analyst failure dynamics to develop a way to better recognize and time large scale, large impact rare event emergence. As part of this discussion, the article assesses the philosophical and factual bases of Nassim Taleb's famous book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, and argues that strong‐version black swan perspectives (views that meaningful forecasting is not possible in an essentially chaotic world where rare black swans shape reality) are significantly responsible for placing unreal limits on the very possibilities of improving professional best practices, they being grounded in philosophical traditions that needlessly constrain better training, and competent risk assessment and futures forecasting.