A snapshot of public finance research from immediately prior to the pandemic: IIPF 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped public policies and government finances, it has also influenced the topics that public finance economists are researching. Because the 2020 International Institute of Public Finance Congress featured papers that were submitted prior to the start of the pandemic, the Congress allows us to reflect on the state of research prior to the pandemic’s shock to both fiscal policies and our worldview. In this article, the Editors of International Tax and Public Finance reflect on interesting papers that were presented at this internationally representative conference in public economics. The exercise provides insight on where the field of public economics was heading prior to the pandemic and will provide a yardstick to see how the field evolves in the coming years afterward.

     

Household factors and discrimination in housing consumption : Further developments in the analysis of tenure choice within housing careers

The decision of households regarding housing consumption should be viewed as decisions within an overall housing career. A model of household residential mobility is derived which may be empirically investigated through a generalisation of competing risk analysis. It is explained how the effects of omitted variables may be dealt with by means of a non-parametric characterisation of their multivariate distribution within a marginal likelihood framework. The problem of initial conditions is discussed in relation to the design of the analysis. The model is applied to the residence histories of a sample of households from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics     

The Oecd Model Tax Treaty: Tax Competition And Two‐Way Capital Flows*

Model tax treaties do not require tax rate coordination, but do require that either credits or exemptions be applied to repatriated earnings. This contradicts recent models with a single capital exporter where deductions are most efficient. I incorporate the fact that capital flows are typically bilateral. With symmetric countries, credits by both is the unique and efficient treaty equilibrium. This equilibrium weakly dominates the nontreaty equilibrium. With asymmetric countries, the treaty need not offer improvements without tax harmonization. With harmonization, it is always possible to reach efficient capital allocations while increasing both countries' welfares only if neither uses deductions.     

The Asian economic recession and retail change: the implications for retailer strategies in Asia

For almost three years the Asian Economic Crisis has been one of the most talked about influences on the retail sector in the region. This paper argues that the economic crisis has hidden or diverted attention away from the underlying changes in retailing that have been proceeding for much longer.A more dynamic and proactive retail sector appears to be evolving, one which is now less of a 'taker' of the strategies of manufacturers and more of a 'setter' of trends in product development and logistics. European and American retailers often appear to be major catalysts in this process, but this is not to say that the Asian retail sector will not develop in its own way, matched to local needs. What does now appear to be clear is that as economies in the region recover, most of their retail sectors will not go back to 'business as usual'.     

Trade barriers in East and South East Asia: the implications for retailers

Many countries in East and South East Asia have erected trade barriers at various times since 1945. Many retail markets have therefore been closed to outside influence and investment. In the 1990s however such measures are being reversed and markets in East and South East Asia are becoming increasingly open. This openness is both a willing embrace of outside investment and a less willing acceptance of external pressures. This paper reviews the changes taking place and concludes that those retailers taking advantage of the opportunities are faced with a variety of problems. Indeed, it would seem that the removal of international trade barriers simply leads to their replacement with more difficult domestic market policies.     

Making Innovation Happen in a Megaproject: London's Crossrail Suburban Railway System

Isolated pockets of innovation can be found in projects—such as the novel solution used to redesign the Velodrome roof during the London 2012 Olympics—but there have been few, if any, systematic efforts to manage innovation in a megaproject. This paper presents the initial findings of an ongoing three‐year (2012–2014) action research project between Crossrail and researchers at Imperial College London and University College London. Action research is well suited to a setting where an intervention is required to diagnose and solve an organizational problem and produce scientific findings (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Van de Ven, 2007). Undertaken in collaboration with practitioners, the aim of action research is to transform the research setting through a process of critical inquiry and action. Our engagement with Crossrail aimed to formulate and implement an innovation strategy to improve the performance and outcomes of the project. We identified four stages—or windows of opportunity—to intervene to generate, discover, and implement innovation in a megaproject: (1) the bridging window during the front‐end when ideas, learning, and practices from other projects and industries can be used to create an innovative project process, organization, and governance structure; (2) the engaging window, when tendering and contractual processes can be used by the client to encourage contractors and suppliers to develop novel ideas and innovative solutions; (3) the leveraging window, when all the parties involved—clients, delivery partners, and suppliers—are mobilized to develop novel ideas, new technologies, and organizational practices to improve performance; and (4) the exchanging window at the back‐end, when ideas and resources for innovation can be (re)combined with those of other projects in the wider innovation ecosystem to improve performance. The first two stages had largely occurred when we became involved in the Crossrail project in 2012. Our intervention addressed the final two stages, when we assisted in the development and implementation of an innovation strategy. Core to this strategy was a coordinated mobilization of the innovative capabilities across the project supply chain. Though, to be successful, this approach had to be open enough to span organizational boundaries beyond the supply chain, reaching into the broader ecosystem. The four windows provide a valuable new heuristic for organizing innovation in megaprojects, pointing to areas where project managers can craft targeted innovation interventions and compare their efforts with those of others.     

How we talk when we talk about nano: The future in laypeople's talk

Nanotechnology is an example of postnormal technoscience ‘in the making’: its concrete products and applications are currently only starting to trickle into the marketplace. In this paper I use nanotechnology as a case to examine how uncertain technoscientific futures are represented in lay talk. I engage with this question through a close analysis of focus group discussion around nanotechnology, describing the cultural and linguistic resources that participants draw upon in doing this, including personal experience and expertise, analogies and comparisons, and fiction and popular culture. These are, I suggest, the key discursive tools with which laypeople can weigh up and evaluate emerging technologies. However, I also argue that these are used flexibly to create different kinds of arguments in different conversational contexts, and use the example of nanotechnology as ‘the same’/’different’ to illustrate this. In concluding I reflect on the implications of these findings for scholars of public opinion and attitude and for those who frame policy on emerging and uncertain science and technology.