THE WELFARE GAINS OF AGE‐RELATED OPTIMAL INCOME TAXATION

Using an overlapping generations model with skill uncertainty and private savings, we quantify the gains of age‐dependent labor income taxation. The total steady‐state welfare gain of switching from age‐independent to age‐dependent nonlinear taxation varies between 2.4% and 4% of GDP. Part of the gain descends from relaxing incentive–compatibility constraints and part is due to capital‐accumulation effects. The welfare gain is of about the same magnitude as that which can be achieved by moving from linear to nonlinear income taxation. Finally, the welfare loss from tax‐exempting interest income is negligible under an optimal age‐dependent labor income tax.     

The core-customer concept

The purpose of this paper is to define and discuss the core-customer concept. This concept examines how a company develops its operations around a single or only a few customers. The customer steers what products and services the supplier develops, which means that it is the customer that dictates the supplier's operations. The core-customer concept may be one method for designing a company's operations, but the paper also aims to challenge companies to consider how they think about customers. The paper contributes to research on customer value and extended service offerings by indicating a business-development strategy based on the customer rather than the supplier's operations. Building a company around a single customer, requires flexibility and competences in finding collaboration partners or in adjusting the organisation to new requirements. The paper refers to these as secondary/supporting competences, while the core competence upon which the company builds its operation is the customer.     

Innovation and employment growth in industrial clusters: evidence from aeronautical firms in Germany

This article investigates the impact of various agglomeration forces on employment and innovation for a sample of aeronautical cluster firms in Northern Germany and a control group of geographically dispersed aeronautical firms in other German regions. The findings suggest that employment growth is positively affected by labor market pooling but this effect is not cluster‐specific. The firms' probability of innovating is positively influenced by knowledge flows from proximate scientific institutions and public information sources as well as demanding local customers. However, only the effect of demanding customers is cluster‐specific.     

The Role and Current Status of IFRS in the Completion of National Accounting Rules – Evidence from Turkey

Abstract

As it is not a member of the European Union, Turkey has not yet adopted EU accounting directives by law. Instead, Turkish standard setting authority adopted International Financial Reporting Standards for entities that have public accountability and has recently prepared the draft Turkish financial reporting standard for non-publicly accountable entities that are subject to independent audit: Framework for Local Financial Reporting. This national standard is influenced by European accounting directive 2013/34, international financial reporting practices and UK experience in addition to national accounting rules.     

Global Crisis,National Responses: The Political Economy of Turkish Exceptionalism

With its dilatory and piecemeal fiscal activism and uncharacteristic aversion to IMF assistance, the Turkish government's response to the global economic crisis of 2008–9 diverged considerably from prevalent trends in other major emerging market countries. Underlying this intriguing pattern were Turkey's pre-existing policy and macroeconomic constraints, cognitive lapses on the part of policymakers, and the conjunctural dynamics of domestic politics. The interplay of these factors progressively narrowed the policy space for vigorous action, leading to a motley combination of reactive initiatives that neither offered sufficient protection to vulnerable social groups nor promised sustainable growth in the long run despite rapid short-term recovery.     

A mechanism design approach to allocating central government funds among regional development agencies

To allocate central government funds among regional development agencies, we look for mechanisms that satisfy three important criteria: efficiency, (individual and coalitional) strategy proofness (a.k.a. dominant strategy incentive compatibility), and fairness. We show that only a uniform mechanism satisfies all three. We also show that all efficient and strategy proof mechanisms must function by assigning budget sets to the agencies and letting them freely choose their optimal bundle. In choosing these budget sets, the agencies’ private information has to be taken into account in a particular way. The only way to additionally satisfy a weak fairness requirement (regions with identical preferences should be treated equally) is to assign all agencies the same budget set, as does the uniform mechanism. Finally and maybe more importantly, we show that the central government should not impose constraints on how much to fund an activity (e.g. by reserving some funds only for a particular activity): otherwise, there are no efficient, strategy proof and fair mechanisms, no matter how small these constraints are.