Wachstumsaspekte des schweizerischen Steuersystems

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The present state and prospects of the European Communities

The image of the European Communities has lost some of its glamour as should be stated bluntly in any attempt to present a fair view of the state and prospects of the European Economic Community, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community—the three communities which have sprung from the Treaties of Rome and Paris. As their organs have since been merged, they will here be designated “The Community”. Walter Kittel, the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Community, states in the following a personal view.     

Market Responses to Buy Recommendations Issued by Personal Finance Magazines: Effects of Information, Price-Pressure, and Company Characteristics

This paper analyzes explicit buy recommendations for stockspublished by German Personal Finance Magazines from 1995 to2003. These recommendations earn significant abnormal returnsof 2.58% within the five days around the publication day. Boththe price-pressure hypothesis and the information hypothesiscan be confirmed by our data. The price-pressure effect is mostevident for small stocks and glamour stocks. However, whereasthe initial price reaction to small stocks is additionally drivenby permanent information value, this does not hold true forglamour stocks. In contrast, value stocks are associated withhigh cumulative abnormal returns that are solely driven by informationvalue.     

The Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing under Proportional Transaction Costs in Finite Discrete Time

We prove a version of the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing, which applies to Kabanov's modeling of foreign exchange markets under transaction costs. The financial market is described by a   d × d   matrix-valued stochastic process  (Π _t ) ^T _{t =0}  specifying the mutual bid and ask prices between d assets. We introduce the notion of "robust no arbitrage," which is a version of the no-arbitrage concept, robust with respect to small changes of the bid-ask spreads of  (Π _t ) ^T _{t =0}  . The main theorem states that the bid-ask process  (Π _t ) ^T _{t =0}  satisfies the robust no-arbitrage condition iff it admits a strictly consistent pricing system. This result extends the theorems of Harrison-Pliska and Kabanov-Stricker pertaining to the case of finite Ω, as well as the theorem of Dalang, Morton, and Willinger and Kabanov, Rásonyi, and Stricker, pertaining to the case of general Ω. An example of a  5 × 5  -dimensional process  (Π _t )² _{t =0}  shows that, in this theorem, the robust no-arbitrage condition cannot be replaced by the so-called strict no-arbitrage condition, thus answering negatively a question raised by Kabanov, Rásonyi, and Stricker.     

Mandatory dividend rules: Do they make it harder for firms to invest?

What are the costs and benefits of mandatory dividend rules? On the one hand, they make it harder for controlling shareholders to divert corporate assets. On the other hand, they reduce the internal funds available for firms to invest, possibly leading to the loss of valuable projects. To assess this trade-off, we look at investment and dividend decisions in a sample of public firms in Brazil. We show that a significant fraction of these firms use loopholes of Brazil's mandatory dividend rules to avoid paying dividends. And yet, the dividend rules are effective. They help explain why the average dividend yield in Brazil is higher than in the U.S., without making it harder for firms to invest.