Why do countries combine the exemption system for the taxation of foreign profits with domestic double taxation relief?

Many European countries exempt foreign profits from domestic corporate taxation. At the shareholder level, however, all corporate profits are taxed, and double taxation relief is granted only for domestic corporate taxes. This paper attempts to rationalize this tax policy. In the presence of double taxation agreements which exempt foreign profits from domestic corporate taxation, countries may use shareholder taxes to tax these profits. The disadvantage of shareholder taxes is that they create incentives to sell domestic firms to foreigners. But double taxation relief for domestic profits may preserve domestic ownership. Our results imply that national dividend tax policies may be a factor contributing to the empirically observed home bias in investment.     

Schärfere Regulierung von Managergehältern in Aktiengesellschaften?

Zusammenfassung  Die Finanzmarktkrise hat einer breiten ?ffentlichkeit bewusst gemacht, dass Manager auch in notleidenden Unternehmen hohe Geh?lter und Bonuszahlungen erhalten. Darauf hat die Bundesregierung mit einem Gesetzesvorschlag zur Angemessenheit der Vorstandsvergütung reagiert. Die deutlichen Zuw?chse der Managergeh?lter in den letzten 20 Jahren führen zu der Frage, nach welchen Kriterien die Entlohnung von Managern und anderen Arbeitskr?ften zu bewerten ist. Kann die geplante Reform zu mehr Gerechtigkeit verhelfen? Prof. Dr. Bernd Noll, 55, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre und Wirtschaftsethik an der Hochschule Pforzheim; Fridolin Haag, 25, Dipl.-Betriebswirt, arbeitet als Projektmanager in einem mittelst?ndischen Logistik-Unternehmen.     

Identifying personality traits to enhance trust between organisations: an experimental approach

We investigate an experimental representatives' trust game which resembles trust relationships between representatives of organisations. Personality traits of subjects are elicited by a personality questionnaire (Cattell's 16 PF‐R) which is well established in personnel psychology. For the first time, personality traits are linked to actually observed behaviour in a trust game. Detailed personality profiles are derived and it is shown that they differ significantly between behavioural types. Individuals with low scores in anxiety turn out to be particularly qualified for enhancing trust between organisations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing Customer Relationships in the Social Media Era: Introducing the Social CRM House

CRM has traditionally referred to a company managing relationships with customers. The rise of social media, which has connected and empowered customers, challenges this fundamental raison d'etre. This paper examines how CRM needs to adapt to the rise of social media. The convergence of social media and CRM creates pitfalls and opportunities, which are explored. We organize this discussion around the new “social CRM house,” and discuss how social media engagement affects the house's core areas (i.e., acquisition, retention, and termination) and supporting business areas (i.e., people, IT, performance evaluation, metrics and overall marketing strategy). Pitfalls discussed include the organization's lack of control over message diffusion, big and unstructured data sets, privacy, data security, the shortage of qualified manpower, measuring the ROI of social media marketing initiatives, strategies for managing employees, integrating customer touch points, and content marketing.     

Money-output Granger causality revisited: an empirical analysis of EU countries

In this paper, the evidence collected in the large literature on testing for Granger-causality from money to output is revisited. Using a broad data base of 14 EU countries plus Canada, the US and Japan, and quarterly data from the mid 1960s to mid 1990s, a number of hypotheses from this literature is evaluated. It is found that very few general conclusions can be sustained. For instance, in most countries it is not the case that the use of data in levels creates a bias in favour of finding Granger-causality effects of money on output compared to using differences. Neither does the significance of money lags decline when increasing the number of variables included in the model. What appears to be robust, though, is that allowing for asymmetries clearly increases the likelihood of finding significant causality effects. Based on the Granger-causality test results, a number of country groups are obtained using cluster analysis, which are characterized by a similarly behaviour with respect to the money-output relation.     

Friedens-versus Ausscheidegrenze in der Krankenversicherung: Ein<Emphasis Type="Italic">kriegerischer</Emphasis> Beitrag für mehr Nachhaltigkeit

The German health insurance system is separated between the private and public sector by a social security ceiling. To reduce the risk selection of the current system we discuss the implications of the conversion of the upper income limit into a provision limit. Using a generational accounting approach, we find that such a conversion has a negative effect in respect of sustainability. In addition, we present the idea of a transfer premium, which reflects the value of the analyzed group of insurants. Our results show that with a transfer premium or in a system of lump-sum-premiums, the provision limit would have positive implications and would leave the German system more sustainable.     

Logic from space

This is one of the essential results of an inquiry into spacetime-sociology which was outlined and begun with in a research memorandum of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna (IHS) 1992. It contains a proof that classical logic, or Boole's laws of thought, can be derived from an original concept of orientation that has emerged in human cognition during paleolithic worship activity. The original concept of orientation represents a genetic structure of orientation in both physical and social space. This is of a considerable importance. Because the original concept of orientation in its exact mathematical form is a symmetry in space, strictly a subgroup of the rotation-groupD ₃. Thus it belongs to the fields of mathematics and physics entirely and has nothing to do with logistics, linguistics or sociology. On the other hand binary logic is an important aspect of language and thought and seems to have little in common with the perception of objects in space. So there is a connection between logic and orientation in space. Mathematically this is represented by an isomorphism between the spatial symmetryD _2d of the Mandala of the quartered circle and the symmetry of classical logic.