Theft and taxes

This paper analyzes the interaction between corporate taxes and corporate governance. We show that the design of the corporate tax system affects the amount of private benefits extracted by company insiders and that the quality of the corporate governance system affects the sensitivity of tax revenues to tax changes. Analyses of a tax enforcement crackdown in Russia and cross-country data on tax changes support this two-way interaction between corporate governance and corporate taxation.     

Is it time to reduce the minimum tick sizes of the E‐mini futures?

On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), so‐called “E‐mini” index futures contracts trade on the electronic GLOBEX trading system alongside the corresponding full‐size contracts that trade on the open outcry floor. This paper finds that the current minimum tick sizes of the E‐mini S&P 500 and E‐mini Nasdaq‐100 futures contracts act as binding constraints on the bid‐ask spreads by not allowing the spreads to decline to competitive levels. We also find that, while exchange locals trade very actively on GLOBEX, they do not tend to act as liquidity suppliers. Taken together, our empirical results suggest that it is time for the CME to consider decreasing the minimum tick sizes of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq‐100 E‐mini futures contracts. A tick size reduction is likely to result in lower trading costs in the E‐mini futures markets. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:79–104, 2005     

A note on the value of public information in monopoly

The paper shows that in the standard model of monopoly with asymmetric information and second-degree price discrimination, the monopolist prefers to reveal public information under a form of stochastic dependence that is weaker than the affiliation of private values, private signals, and public signals.      

Graduates' career aspirations and individual characteristics

Using the basic distinction between organisational and post‐organisational career orientation, this article examines preferences of business school graduates for different types of career fields and systematic differences between people with different career orientations in terms of behavioural characteristics as well as personality traits. The results show that business school graduates clearly distinguish between organisational and post‐organisational career fields. Graduates with post‐organisational career aspirations display attributes of high flexibility, leadership motivation, selfpromotion/self‐assertion, self‐monitoring, networking and less self‐consciousness. For individuals preferring an organisational career pattern, inverse relationships apply. Some implications of the findings for HR practice are discussed.     

Interaction of the Russian Financial Markets

The different segments of he Russian financial markets are studied in the paper. The market crashed on 17 August 1998. We consider the stable period of the market between May 1996 and October 1997. We study the structure of interactions between the GKO market, stock market, currency market, currency futures market, GKO futures market, interbank credit market. We study the relations between the world financial market and the Russian financial market. It was shown that, in the period under consideration, different segments of the Russian financial market became more integrated and the market as whole became more stable and more integrated in the international capital flows.     

Mainstreaming Sustainable Development-A Case Study: Ashton Hayes is going Carbon Neutral

The Parish Council of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire voted in November 2005 to try to become England's first carbon neutral village. This grass roots project has grown rapidly in its first year and has engaged a large proportion of village residents. The project has produced a number of impacts on the community and the wider region and these are being evaluated in terms of their environmental, economic and social dimensions. This paper describes the process of project development and implementation and draws some general conclusions from this experience before going on to consider some of the findings of the initial evaluation of the project. We conclude by suggesting that Ashton Hayes provides an interesting case study of a community-led attempt to bring sustainable development into the mainstream and that the challenge remains, as with many community-led initiatives, of how to translate the considerable early momentum of the project into sustainable forms of participation and behaviour.     

Quasi Score is more Efficient than Corrected Score in a Polynomial Measurement Error Model

We consider a polynomial regression model, where the covariate is measured with Gaussian errors. The measurement error variance is supposed to be known. The covariate is normally distributed with known mean and variance. Quasi score (QS) and corrected score (CS) are two consistent estimation methods, where the first makes use of the distribution of the covariate (structural method), while the latter does not (functional method). It may therefore be surmised that the former method is (asymptotically) more efficient than the latter one. This can, indeed, be proved for the regression parameters. We do this by introducing a third, so-called simple score (SS), estimator, the efficiency of which turns out to be intermediate between QS and CS. When one includes structural and functional estimators for the variance of the error in the equation, SS is still more efficient than CS. When the mean and variance of the covariate are not known and have to be estimated as well, one can still maintain that QS is more efficient than SS for the regression parameters.     

On option pricing in binomial market with transaction costs

Option replication is studied in a discrete-time framework with proportional transaction costs. The model represents an extension of the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial option-pricing model to cover the case of proportional transaction costs for one risky asset with different interest rates on bank credit and deposit. Contingent claims are supposed to be 2-dimensional random variables. Explicit formulas for self-financing strategies are obtained for this case.Received: March 2004, Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 62P05JEL Classification: G11, G13The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for numerous helpful comments and to Yulia Romaniuk for final corrections. The paper was partially supported by grant NSERC 264186.