Correction to: Multinational corporations and tax havens: evidence from country‑by‑country reporting

International Tax and Public Finance - The original version of this article contained a mistake in the co-author name “Javier Garcia?Bernando”.     

Tax System Sustainability Evaluation: A Model for EU Countries

Intereconomics - We follow the multi-dimensional approach to socio-economic sustainability and distinguish among the needs of society in the four dimensions that make up the basic pillars in our...     

The Neighbourhood Policy of the European Union

The European Neighbourhood Policy aims at creating a ring of stable, friendly and democratic countries surrounding the European Union. While this aim is generally accepted across the Union, major differences persist as to how it should be achieved. Where does the ENP stand today? What is its profile, potential and perspective?     

Prevalence and Forms of Workplace Bullying Among University Employees

Over the past decade, a growing number of Anglo-American and Scandinavian researchers have documented the extent to which the university environment provides opportunities for workplace bullying. By contrast, there has been a visible lack of similar studies in non-Western national contexts, such as the Czech Republic and other Central Eastern European (CEE) countries. The present article addresses this gap by reporting the findings of the first large-scale study into workplace bullying among university employees in the Czech Republic. The exposure to bullying was assessed with the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) in a sample of 1,533 university employees. The results showed that 13.6 % of the respondents were classified as bullying targets based on an operational definition of bullying (weekly exposure to one negative act), while 7.9 % of the respondents were identified as targets based on self-reports. This prevalence is comparable to bullying rates in Scandinavia but considerably lower than in Anglo-American universities. Differences between Anglo-American and Czech universities were also found with respect to the status of perpetrators (bullying was perpetrated mostly by individual supervisors in the Czech sample), perceived causes of bullying (structural causes perceived as relatively unimportant in the Czech sample), and targets’ responses to bullying (minimal use of formal responses in the Czech sample). The authors propose that cross-cultural differences as well as differences between the Anglo-American model of “neoliberal university” and the Czech model of university governance based on “academic oligarchy” can be used to explain these different findings.     

Incorporating rigidity and commitment in the timing structure of macroeconomic games

This paper proposes a novel framework that generalizes the timing structure of games. Building on alternating move games and models of rational inattention, the players' actions may be rigid, i.e., infrequent. This rigidity in the timing of moves makes the game more dynamic and asynchronous, acting as a commitment mechanism. Therefore, it can enhance cooperation and often eliminate inefficient equilibrium outcomes present in the static (normal form) game. Interestingly, (i) this can happen even in a finite game (possibly as short as two periods) and (ii) without reputation building. Furthermore, (iii) the required degree of commitment may be under some circumstances arbitrarily low and under others infinitely high. Our main example comes from macroeconomics in which various rigidities have played a central role. Investigating the Kydland–Prescott–Barro–Gordon monetary policy game, we derive the necessary and sufficient degree of long-term policy commitment to low inflation under which the influential time-inconsistency problem is eliminated.     

Farming system modelling for agri-environmental policy design: The case of a spatially non-aggregated allocation of conservation measures

This paper addresses the issue of designing policies for habitat conservation on agricultural land. The case under study requires a non-aggregated spatial distribution of the fields to be enrolled in an agri-environmental programme. A spatially explicit mathematical programming farm-based model, which accounts for three spatial levels (field, farm and landscape), is coupled with a relevant spatial pattern index (the Ripley L-function) to analyse the design and implementation of an agri-environmental programme aimed to preserve the Tetrax tetrax in the Plaine de Niort, France. The model is run using a stylised map with heterogeneous soil types and both crop growing and mixed dairy farms. Results show that valuable insights into agri-environmental programme design are gained through a detailed representation of farming system management. The suitable, non-aggregated spatial pattern for T. tetrax conservation is more costly than less-suitable, more aggregated patterns, because it tends to require equal participation of all farms. The policy simulations reveal that the various spatial patterns can be obtained through relatively simple uniform contract structures. An effective contract structure entails a set of two degressive payments which encourages all farms to enrol at least a small share of their land in the program.