Why is there Corporate Taxation? The Role of Limited Liability Revisited

Most economists reject the idea that corporate taxation should be interpreted as a price for the privilege of limited liability. In this paper, we reconsider this idea and show that limited liability can lead to overinvestment if information is incomplete. In this setting, introducing an additional tax on limited liability contracts is welfare-enhancing. Our model thus offers an explanation for the nexus between double taxation and limited liability observed in many existing tax systems.      

W. Arthur Lewis in Retrospect

This paper reviews several themes from the writings of W. Arthur Lewis, both the first black Nobel Laureate in Economics and the first from a developing country, and examines them from the perspective of two to five decades of hindsight. The paper emphasizes three main interrelated aspects; economic growth, economic dualism, and “the evolution of the economic order”—the forces that drive the prices of goods and relative incomes across countries. Lewis’s messages still resonate today, as he foresaw the rise of industrial exports from developing countries—and also that it would not end the large gaps among nations’ standards of living. The paper both documents these rises and asks whether one could have predicted it from information available in the 1960s, or whether additional prescience was necessary.     

Modeling Sovereign Yield Spreads: A Case Study of Russian Debt

We construct a model for pricing sovereign debt that accounts for the risks of both default and restructuring, and allows for compensation for illiquidity. Using a new and relatively efficient method, we estimate the model using Russian dollar-denominated bonds. We consider the determinants of the Russian yield spread, the yield differential across different Russian bonds, and the implications for market integration, relative liquidity, relative expected recovery rates, and implied expectations of different default scenarios.     

Experiencing Change in German Controlling – Management Accounting in a Globalized World

Abstract

In this study, I consider the effects of tax risk from tax volatility on the pricing of syndicated debt. Tax volatility is an interesting feature in that managers have some discretion over the risks they take with their tax strategies, which, however, are often harder to monitor for outsiders than risks related to other business activities. Framing my predictions based on the theoretical model developed by Merton [1974], I hypothesize and find that tax volatility is incrementally informative to other priced risks suggesting that tax risks per se are relevant to lenders. Moreover, I find that the results are stronger when the loan contract does not include performance pricing provisions or other restrictions, such as capital expenditure covenants, that protect lenders. This evidence adds to knowledge about the real effects of tax risk.     

When Organisations Deinstitutionalise Control Practices: A Multiple-Case Study of Budget Abandonment

Abstract

Drawing on a framework of deinstitutionalisation, this study explores the abandonment of budgeting through a multiple-case study of four companies. The findings illustrate how a number of antecedents to deinstitutionalisation acted in each setting and show that abandonment was only achieved through skilful agency by dominant insiders to construct the need and manage for change. In addition, a finding of the study is that two of the four companies reversed the deinstitutionalisation and reintroduced traditional budgeting. This is explained by highlighting the role of remnants of formerly institutionalised practices and by demonstrating the importance of administrative and cultural controls which can support the abandonment of a central accounting control practice in the first place. Overall, this research extends previous studies of deinstitutionalisation by analysing a taken-for-granted practice at the micro-level and by giving a more agentic account of its processes.     

On Ramsey equilibrium: capital ownership pattern and inefficiency

We provide a sufficient condition on the production function under which eventually the most patient household owns the entire capital stock in every Ramsey equilibrium, called the turnpike property. This generalizes the result in the literature which establishes the turnpike property using the capital income monotonicity condition. We then provide an example of a Ramsey equilibrium in which the most patient household reaches a no capital position infinitely often. This is a strong refutation of the turnpike property on Ramsey equilibria. We also show that the constructed Ramsey equilibrium is inefficient in terms of the aggregate consumption stream that it provides.