Institutional environment,ownership and firm taxation

This paper examines how ownership type and institutional environment affect firm taxation. Using a sample of Chinese‐listed firms from 1999 to 2006, we find that private firms enjoy a lower effective tax rate than local state‐owned enterprises. In addition, the preferential taxation of private firms is associated with local government incentives to promote local economic growth. We find that private firms located in regions with a lower level of privatization receive preferential tax treatment. Our results also suggest that decentralization and interjurisdictional competition lead to financial interdependence between local governments and private firms.     

Fiscal illusion and the demand for government expenditures in the UK

This paper examines whether variables commonly used to test standard fiscal illusion arguments (that tax structure affects voters' demands for public goods) can help explain the time-series behaviour of government expenditure in the UK during 1955–1994. We modify a standard median voter model to incorporate fiscal illusion via ‘less visible' (indirect) taxes and deficit financing. While we find evidence that both are positively associated with increased government spending, this would appear to be consistent with both fiscal illusion and standard efficiency arguments.     

On sabotage in collective tournaments

In this paper a tournament between teams (a collective tournament) is considered, where each contestant may spend productive effort in order to increase his team’s performance or sabotage the members of the opponent team. It is shown that each team directs all its sabotage activities at exactly one of the opponent team’s least able members. This is due to two effects, a decreasing-returns effect and a complementarity effect. The result is of particular interest, as findings on individual tournaments indicate that very able players should usually be sabotaged most strongly.     

The Role of the Independent Director: Evidence from a Survey of Independent Directors in Australia

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a survey of independent directors on a range of issues relating to the execution of their role including the independent directors' perceptions relating to board effectiveness, board interactions, information sources, and performance and evaluation. A survey was forwarded to independent directors of the top 200 Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed companies. The paper aims to provide the perceptions of independent directors themselves and so contribute to the literature through a better understanding of the nature of the work performed by Australian company independent directors and the environment in which it occurs. Findings suggest that the fundamental role of the independent director has not changed as a result of the corporate governance reforms.     

Cooperative Carbon Alliances: Defining an Agenda for Global Industrial Decarbonisation

There have been several recent proposals for cooperative climate alliances, from the OECD, the IMF, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the German Government, and others. The “Climate Club” concept comprises many different possible regimes and intents. They range from so-called transformational clubs (which incentivise membership and penalise non-members), to looser joint agreements on ambition level for climate action, such as the UN’s Net-Zero Coalition. Given this option, there is not yet any agreement on how to design such a “club”, or its aims, rules, or scope of membership.

     

MORAL HAZARD,RISK AVERSION AND EFFICIENCY

This note revisits the classic moral‐hazard model, but assumes that the output distribution has moving support and punishments are limited. The results show that the principal can implement an efficient solution if the agent is sufficiently risk averse.     

Towards a typology of business process management professionals: identifying patterns of competences through latent semantic analysis

While researchers have analysed the organisational competences that are required for successful Business Process Management (BPM) initiatives, individual BPM competences have not yet been studied in detail. In this study, latent semantic analysis is used to examine a collection of 1507 BPM-related job advertisements in order to develop a typology of BPM professionals. This empirical analysis reveals distinct ideal types and profiles of BPM professionals on several levels of abstraction. A closer look at these ideal types and profiles confirms that BPM is a boundary-spanning field that requires interdisciplinary sets of competence that range from technical competences to business and systems competences. Based on the study’s findings, it is posited that individual and organisational alignment with the identified ideal types and profiles is likely to result in high employability and organisational BPM success.