Shareholder Value Maximisation,Stock Market and New Technology: Should the US Corporate Model be the Universal Standard? 1

In 1992 a blue‐ribbon group of US economists led by Michael Porter concluded that the US stock market‐based corporate model was misallocating resources and jeopardising US competitiveness. The faster growth of US economy since then and the supposed US lead in the spread of information technology has brought new legitimacy to the stock market and the corporate model, which is being hailed as the universal standard. Two main conclusions of the analysis presented here are: (a) there is no warrant for revising the blue‐ribbon group’s conclusion; and (b) even US corporations let alone developing country ones would be better off not having stock market valuation as a corporate goal.     

On the distribution of tax effects on headquarters location

This paper sheds light on the distribution of profit and personal income tax elasticities of headquarters location across 13,074 firms in 68 countries over 1999–2012. Results suggest high variability in elasticities, which is overlooked in virtually all earlier work on the matter.     

Competition Policy as Strategic Trade with Differentiated Products

The paper analyzes how countries use competition policy as a tool for strategic trade. In the model, two countries export to a third country. Each exporting country is endowed with a set of differentiated products. Each government chooses the number of exporters for its country and the products that each exporter sells in the first period, and a tax policy in the second period. Firms choose prices or quantities independently in the third period. In the unique subgame‐perfect equilibrium, both countries group all their products within a single firm—the “national champion policy.” We study the implication of different assumptions about the timing of the game.     

A Proposal to Compare Consistently the Inequality Among the Poor

A poverty index should be sensitive to the number of poor people, the extent of the shortfall of the poor, and the inequality among the poor. A difficulty arises when inequality among the poor needs to be assessed. The inequality may be analyzed in terms of either incomes or gaps. Depending on what side we focus on, the inequality level comparisons may be contradictory. This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the inequality component involved in the decompositions of well‐known poverty indices. The alternative indices we introduce measure equally the income and gap inequality among the poor. The comparisons in inequality as measured by these indices are then independent of the viewpoint. An empirical application illustrates the proposal.     

Extending the SAM with Social and Environmental Indicators: An Application to Bolivia

Extending economic accounts with sets of social and environmental indicators is a first step towards a more integrated analysis of aspects of sustainability problems. In this article, therefore, a proposal is made to nest social and environmental indicators into an existing economic accounting framework. The Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is taken as a basis, because of its flexibility regarding extensions with non-monetary data addressing social and environmental concerns. The main thrust of the paper is methodological. From the discussion of methodological issues and the application to the SAM for Bolivia for the year 1989, it is concluded that it is, in principle, feasible and relatively simple to extend the SAM with the two sets of indicators. However, additional data will have to be collected to be able to address, more adequately, the problems of sustainability.     

内部控制体系建设中的几点体会——以中国石油股份公司内控建设为例

本文介绍了内部控制体系的内容,从领导、环境、业务流程、制度建设、信息系统建设、内部控制的过程、员工素质、内部控制工作成果八个角度对内部控制体系的建设谈了自己的体会。     

Tax competition for foreign direct investments and the nature of the incumbent firm

We investigate tax/subsidy competition for foreign direct investments (FDI) between countries of different size when a domestic firm is the incumbent in the largest market and we study how the nature (public or private) of the incumbent firm affects policy competition. We show that, differently from the case of a private firm, the country hosting the incumbent always benefits from FDI if the domestic firm is a public welfare‐maximizing firm. We also show that the public firm acts as a disciplinary device for the foreign multinational that will always choose the efficient welfare‐maximizing location. An efficiency‐enhancing role of policy competition may then arise only when the domestic incumbent is a private firm, whereas tax competition is always wasteful in the presence of a public firm.     

The effects of health aid on child health promotion in developing countries: cross-country evidence

Although epidemiological knowledge in relation to child health has improved in the last few decades, around 3 million children die each year in developing countries from preventable diseases. The international development community views increased immunization coverage for children as an important step in eliminating or reducing these deaths. Many developing countries have very limited resources to tackle major health problems and have to rely on external finance. This article examines the impact of foreign aid devoted to the health sector on child health promotion in developing countries. Two proxies for child health promotion are used: (a) immunization against measles and (b) immunization against Diphtheria–Pertussis–Tetanus (DPT). A range of model specifications and panel data econometric techniques are applied to data covering the period 1990 to 2005. This article finds a positive and statistically significant link between health aid and the measures of child health promotion.     

Quantiles, expectiles and splines

A time-varying quantile can be fitted by formulating a time series model for the corresponding population quantile and iteratively applying a suitably modified state space signal extraction algorithm. It is shown that such quantiles satisfy the defining property of fixed quantiles in having the appropriate number of observations above and below. Like quantiles, time-varying expectiles can be estimated by a state space signal extraction algorithm and they satisfy properties that generalize the moment conditions associated with fixed expectiles. Because the state space form can handle irregularly spaced observations, the proposed algorithms can be adapted to provide a viable means of computing spline-based non-parametric quantile and expectile regressions.