Tax Regimes and Capital Gains Realizations

This paper contrasts the individual capital gains realization behavior between progressive and proportional tax regimes. Using a longitudinal panel of over 288,000 individuals in Sweden, I exploit the 1991 tax reform in Sweden that changed progressive capital gains tax rates ranging from 12% to 80% to a proportional tax rate of 30%. Using the proportional tax system to control for non-tax reasons to realize capital gains, I show that individuals are highly responsive to capital gains tax incentives created by temporary income changes under a progressive capital gains tax. More specifically, I find that individuals with temporary negative (positive) income changes sell (hold) shares that they would hold (sell) in the absence of temporary tax incentives. Further, I show that high-income individuals are more tax sensitive than low-income individuals. This result indicates that low-income individuals facing temporary negative income changes could trade predominantly for non-tax reasons.     

Opportunity Cost Pass‐Through from Fossil Fuel Market Prices to Procurement Costs of the U.S. Power Producers

This paper investigates the transmission of fossil fuel commodity spot market price changes to procurement costs of U.S. power producers. We measure and compare the speed and magnitude with which spot prices predict procurement costs using restricted access fuel price data. Natural gas spot prices are quickly reflected in procurement costs. Coal spot prices offer very little predictive power to coal procurement costs. Although not causal, the empirical results also show differences across regulatory status. These findings may have implications for the electricity market deregulation literature that creates marginal cost curves as a competitive benchmark.     

Influence of purchaser perceptions and intentions on price for forest land parcels: A hedonic pricing approach

A hedonic model was developed to analyze the market for undeveloped forest land in Minnesota. Variables describing in situ conditions, locational characteristics, buyer perceptions and intentions, and transactional terms were tested for their influence on sale price. The independent variables explained 67% of the per hectare sale price variation. Water frontage, road access and density, absentee ownership, future intentions, and financing arrangements had large, positive influences on price. Lack of a real-estate agent and agricultural land in the vicinity of the parcel had negative influences. A parcel's merchantable timber volume was not a significant predictor of price.     

International Knowledge Spillovers to Developing Countries: The Case of Indonesia

The successful industrialization and catch up of countries in the East Asian region gave rise to an important debate concerning the role played by technological learning and knowledge creation. This paper seeks to examine this issue for Indonesia, a second‐tier newly industrializing country. It focuses on the relative importance of learning from imported inputs vis‐à‐vis other factors influencing productivity in manufacturing. The concept of learning is operationalized drawing on the literature on technology spillovers on the one hand, and the literature on catch up à la Abramovitz, on the other. Our results indicate that knowledge spillovers have become significant contributors to labor productivity growth after the liberalization of the Indonesian economy.     

Price Discrimination with One-way Separated Markets

This paper extends the traditional model of third degree price discrimination which assumes complete separation between markets to the case where markets are only one-way separated. In two periods of time one can carry over quantities of the product from the present to the future but not vice versa. We show that this model provides a wide framework for analysis of several promotional marketing strategies.     

New Organicism

A bstract . This essay focuses on the "organismic" approach to the world of economic phenomena, as found in Carl Menger's work and, in a more mature form, in that of the present-day author Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. The author calls this type of organicism New Organicism , considering it a modern version of the organicism of nineteenth-century authors like Wilhelm Roscher.
This study presents Carl Menger as the main founder of the new way of economic thinking in organismic terms. It also shows that Menger did not fully integrate his organismic ideas into his economic philosophy. Furthermore, mention is made of Menger's antipode, Gustav Schmoller , as a fundamental thinker in this field. The author sees Schmoller as a predecessor of the systems theory variant of modern organismic economic thought. Next Krabbe looks at Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, whose organismic synthesis he reflects. Finally, mention is made of the organismic orientation of three authors; Anghel Rugina, Lazaros Houmanidis and John Sutherland.     

Intra- and Inter-industry Externalities from Foreign Direct Investment in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector: New Evidence from Mexican Regions

This paper presents new empirical evidence on externalities from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in several Mexican regions in the early 1990s. The main findings are threefold. First, the presence of FDI creates negative externalities within industries and positive externalities between industries through backward linkages. Second, FDI-externalities are stimulated by large technological differences between FDI and Mexican firms and by geographic concentration of industries. Third, we identify a substantial level of regional heterogeneity of the externality impact of FDI, in line with the notion that FDI may have contributed to processes of changing regional prosperity under trade liberalization. The findings also imply that maquiladora firms in the border states are generating positive externalities.     

The transition from product to service in business markets: An agenda for academic inquiry

In recent years, industrial manufacturers around the world have deployed growing efforts in developing services in addition to their traditional product business in order to secure long-term growth and to remain competitive in the marketplace. Against this background, the present article introduces the reader to this special issue. It first recalls key aspects of the emerging service-dominant logic of marketing and examines how it relates to the business marketing field. It then illustrates the challenges faced by top executives of industrial companies in the transition from a product-centric to a service-centric business perspective through an interview with the managing director of ThyssenKrupp Service AG. After discussing how the articles included in this special issue advance the extant literature on industrial services marketing, the article finally develops a number of directions for future research on services in business markets.     

The characterization of decisive weighted majority rules

This note supplies a rationale for the adoption of decisive weighted majority rules by small decision-making bodies (n<6). It proves that such rules are the only decision rules that satisfy the two common and quite mild conditions of monotonicity and neutrality.