The Impact of Bank Credit on Employment Formality: Evidence from Uruguay

This article examines the effect of bank credit on employment formalization in Uruguay. Using a difference-in-differences methodology the article finds that financial deepening decreases informality, especially in more financially dependent sectors. In addition, the effect is found to be greater among women and older workers. In the period under analysis the economy underwent a severe economic crisis and bank credit contracted sharply, but we find no evidence that the effect of bank credit on employment formality changed over time.     

Push‐me pull‐you: comparative advertising in the OTC analgesics industry

We derive equilibrium incentives to use comparative advertising that pushes up own brand perception and pulls down the brand image of targeted rivals. Data on content and spending for all TV advertisements in Over‐The‐ Counter (OTC) analgesics enable us to construct matrices of rival targeting expenditures and estimate the structural model. Using brands' optimal choices, these attack matrices identify diversion ratios, from which we derive comparative advertising damage measures. We find that comparative advertising causes more damage to the targeted rival than benefit to the advertiser. We simulate banning comparative advertising to find industry profits rise.     

How Does FDI React to Corporate Taxation?

Based on a panel of bilateral FDI flows among 11 OECD countries over 1984–2000, we show that, although agglomeration-related factors are strong determinants of FDI, tax differentials also play a significant role in understanding foreign location decisions. We further investigate non-linearities in the impact of tax differentials, and explore the impact of tax schemes. Our results are consistent with the imperfect competition literature which underscores the possibility of tax differentials across countries in equilibrium.JEL Code: F21, H25, H87     

Is There a Connection Between the Tax Administration and the Political Power?

This paper offers empirical evidence from Spain of a connection between the tax administration and the political power at the regional level. Firstly, the system of unconditional grants from the central layer of government provokes an “income effect” which disincentivises the efforts of the regional tax administration. Secondly, these efforts tend to be lower in those electoral districts where vote turnout is high, the margin to lose a parliamentary seat is narrow and their parliamentary representation is high, although the importance of these disincentives decreases according to the parliamentary strength of the incumbent. Finally, leftist governments, through the tax administration, tend to exert a greater effort in ensuring tax compliance.     

论消费者权益案中的举证责任配置

与商品生产经营者相比，消费者在保护消费者权益过程中发生的经济关系中处于弱势地位，因而在侵权诉讼中配置举证责任时应向消费者倾斜，即消费者只需负责举证受损害的事实证据，其他举证责任则应由商品生产经营者负责。     

Some New Evidence on the Determinants of Large- and Small-Firm Innovation

Empirical analyses presented by Acs and Audretsch suggest differences in the market structure determinants of innovation between large and small firms in U.S. manufacturing. The evidence they offer is ambiguous. By using data for a different country (The Netherlands), a different measure of innovation and a different aggregation level, we offer new evidence, allowing a revaluation of the findings for the U.S. material. Moreover, the influence of the market structure determinants does not appear to differ between a period of sluggish growth (1983) and one of relatively high growth (1989).     

Gibrat’s law: empirical test of Portuguese service industries using dynamic estimators

Using dynamic panel estimators, this article shows rejection of Gibrat’s law for Portuguese companies in the service sector. In companies as a whole, we find that growth depends positively on growth in the previous period and on debt, and depends negatively on size. When we subdivide the sample into small- and medium-sized companies and large companies, the results are similar to those obtained when we take companies as a whole. The differences concern the relationship between ownership control and growth, which is positive in the case of small- and medium-sized companies, and the non-influence of growth in the previous period on growth in the current period in the case of large companies.     

The impact of creative media advertising on consumer responses: two field experiments

Abstract

Creative media (CM) advertising is an advertising strategy wherein a non-traditional medium is creatively used for advertising purposes. This novel advertising strategy is gaining marketers’ interest; however, little is known about its persuasive effects on consumers’ cognitive, affective and behavioural responses and the processes that underlie them. Therefore, to convey a genuine experience to consumers, two field experiments with a one-factor (advertising type: creative vs. traditional) between-subjects design were conducted within a supermarket context. Results showed that creative (vs. traditional) media ads not only improve consumers’ affective and behavioural responses but also consumers’ cognitive responses. Even though no mediations were found through perceived surprise or perceived persuasive intent, results do provide evidence for the notion that perceived humor and perceived value are the underlying mechanisms through which affective and behavioural responses to creative media advertising can be explained.     

COMPENDIA: Harmonizing Business Ownership Data Across Countries and Over Time

This paper presents a harmonized data set over the period 1972–2002, containing two-yearly data on the number of non-agricultural business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of a country. The data set is called COMPENDIA, which means COMParative ENtrepreneurship Data for International Analysis. It has been constructed by EIM Business and Policy Research, using OECD statistics as well as other relevant sources. We make an attempt to make business ownership rates comparable across countries and over time.