Does reduced trade tax revenue affect government spending patterns?

Many skeptics of trade liberalization in the developing world argue that lowering trade taxes can cause significant fiscal pressures in countries particularly reliant on these taxes and result in a reallocation of resources away from important development goals. This paper evaluates whether there is evidence that central governments systematically change the composition of spending priorities in the wake of lowered trade tax revenues as a share of total government revenues. We find no systematic evidence for this concern in a sample of 51 developing countries for the 1991 through 2005 period.     

Analysis of efficient markets

A simple trading model is presented in which Bayes’ rule is used to aggregate traders’ forecasts about risky assets’ future returns. In this financial market, Bayes’ rule operates like an omnipotent market-maker performing functions that in 1776 Adam Smith attributed to an “invisible hand.” We have analyzed two distinct cases: in the first scenario, the traders’ forecast errors are uncorrelated, and in the second scenario, the traders’ forecast errors are correlated. The contribution of our paper is fourfold: first, we prove that the “efficient market” mean-return can be expressed as a complex linear combination of the traders’ forecasts. The weights depend on the forecast variances, as well as on the correlations among the traders’ forecasts. Second we show that the “efficient” variance is equal to the inverse of the sum of the traders’ precision errors, and is also related to the correlations among the traders’ forecast errors. Third, we prove that the efficient market return is the best linear minimum variance estimator (BLMVE) of the security’s mean return (in the sense that it minimizes the sum of the traders’ mean squared forecast errors). Thus, an efficient market aggregates traders’ heterogeneous information in an optimal way. Fourth, we prove that an efficient market produces a mean return (price) as a Blackwell sufficient (most informative) experiment among all possible aggregated expected return (price) forecasts.     

Die Kosten des Klimaschutzes am Beispiel der Strompreise für private Haushalte

Power prices in Germany have been surging since the outset of the new millennium. Among the major reasons for this tendency are newly raised taxes and levies on electricity prices, whose introduction is primarily motivated by climate concerns. Without these taxes and levies, net electricity prices would have remained constant for private households. This article discusses these taxes and levies that have been responsible for the cost increases in private households’ electricity consumption. Most influential have been the feed-in tariffs for renewable energies, above all photovoltaics. According to our calculations, the levy for renewables will further increase in the up-coming years, thereby pushing consumers’ electricity cost once again. Our calculations also show that within the next couple of years, there will be a fierce competition among renewable energy technologies, most notably between photovoltaics and wind power. Politics would be well-advised, therefore, to limit the annual capacity of newly installed solar modules in order to avoid both the explosion of consumers’ electricity bills and strong competition among renewables.     

International transmission of monthly changes in equity values

Our purpose is to answer two questions pertinent to the international transmission of changes in equity values. First, do lead-lag relationships documented in short-horizon (daily) studies continue to hold in longer time (monthly) horizons? Second, does the lead-lag structure remain stable over time? The questions are answered by examining monthly equity returns for nine countries during the 1980s. We find evidence that is somewhat surprising—significant lead-lag relationships among some countries persist in monthly horizons, particularly during the first half of the 1980s. During the second half, the lead-lag relationships are substantially weaker. During the same period, we find that contemporaneous correlations across countries have largely increased, implying greater influence of worldwide factors in determining equity prices.     

Schedule jockeying and route swamping: bus markets in Britain need kerb rights

The experience of British bus deregulation has resulted in less on-the-road competition than anticipated, and a high degree of industry concentration We argue that the specific form of deregulation in Britain has created a property rights problem in the cultivation of passenger congregations at the kerb. The result has been schedule jockeying and route swamping . From a property rights perspective, the disappointing results can be seen as a commons problem. A nuanced approach to property rights at bus stops, permitting scheduled service to appropriate its investment in cultivating passenger congregations, and allowing freewheeling jitneys to compete on the route, could bring the benefits that many had expected from deregulation.     

Accounting on trial: The critical legal studies movement and its lessons for radical accounting

It is now time, after a decade of development, to take stock of the growing, varied, interdisciplinary Critical Accounting movement appearing in the pages of Accounting, Organizations and Society and elsewhere throughout the 1980s. Critical Accounting bears remarkable resemblance to the highly important Critical Legal Studies movement (or CLS) in American academic law. This paper introduces CLS to accounting audiences and surveys Critical Accounting from the perspective of its larger, older, more fully articulated, more radical and more divisive legal cousin. This paper argues that if Critical Accounting continues to share CLS's theoretical and intellectual stance, but not its targeted critical practice and institutional or political stance, Critical Accounting is destined to remain an interesting sidelight rather than a fully articulated theory of accounting. Finally, this paper comments on existing Critical Accounting work from a CLS perspective, and suggests new directions for Critical Accounting as an intellectual movement.     

An Econometric Analysis of U.S. Antidumping Sunset Review Decisions

This paper is the first comprehensive analysis of the U.S. antidumping sunset review process required under WTO commitments. The econometric models study determinants of decisions by three U.S. actors: the petitioning industry, the Department of Commerce (DOC), and the International Trade Commission (ITC). Domestic industries facing potential vigorous competition seem to use sunset reviews to maintain current high domestic profits. U.S. governmental institutions use criteria broadly consistent with their legal obligations. Exports involving Chinese firms may face negative bias in the ITC process. JEL no. F1, F13