A Procedure for Negotiating Pollution Reduction under Information Asymmetry. Surface Water Quality Case

This paper considers an alternative approachto surface water quality management whensociety is faced with the need to reduce waterpollution in a region with a complicatedregulatory environment. The paper is focusedon a specific kind of negotiation betweenpolluters and an authority, leading toresolution of the problem when there is theinformation asymmetry between the authorityand the polluters, i.e., the true pollutionabatement costs are known to the pollutersonly. This paper reports a laboratory experimentalcase prepared at the Department ofEnvironmental Economics, the University ofEconomics in Prague. The comparison withtheoretical computed first-best results underconditions of full information is included.Political and economic aspects of thesuggested approach are also discussed.     

The costs of tax havens: evidence from industry-level data

ABSTRACT

Multinational enterprises make use of tax havens to avoid paying corporate income taxes and this costs 100 billion USD and more in lost government revenue worldwide according to an increasing number of recent studies. None of those studies assigns these costs to industries. I aim to shed more light on this gap by using some of the best available industry-level US data to determine to what extent the location of the MNEs’ profit is aligned with the location of their economic activities. My first finding is that the most important tax havens for US multinational enterprises are the Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg (all EU member states). Second, I systematically identify the specific industries in specific tax havens responsible for the costs, which should be useful information for tax authorities aiming to reduce tax avoidance. Finally, I argue that the current data are not detailed enough to provide a reliable industry breakdown of the costs, but the prospect of combining input-output tables with forthcoming country-by-country data seems more promising.     

Cost of doing business index in Latin America

Quality & Quantity - The World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index (EDBI) has been widely used in analyzes of attracting investments and formulating public policies. Despite its importance...     

Why do global long‐term scenarios for agriculture differ? An overview of the AgMIP Global Economic Model Intercomparison

Recent studies assessing plausible futures for agricultural markets and global food security have had contradictory outcomes. To advance our understanding of the sources of the differences, 10 global economic models that produce long‐term scenarios were asked to compare a reference scenario with alternate socioeconomic, climate change, and bioenergy scenarios using a common set of key drivers. Several key conclusions emerge from this exercise: First, for a comparison of scenario results to be meaningful, a careful analysis of the interpretation of the relevant model variables is essential. For instance, the use of “real world commodity prices” differs widely across models, and comparing the prices without accounting for their different meanings can lead to misleading results. Second, results suggest that, once some key assumptions are harmonized, the variability in general trends across models declines but remains important. For example, given the common assumptions of the reference scenario, models show average annual rates of changes of real global producer prices for agricultural products on average ranging between ?0.4% and +0.7% between the 2005 base year and 2050. This compares to an average decline of real agricultural prices of 4% p.a. between the 1960s and the 2000s. Several other common trends are shown, for example, relating to key global growth areas for agricultural production and consumption. Third, differences in basic model parameters such as income and price elasticities, sometimes hidden in the way market behavior is modeled, result in significant differences in the details. Fourth, the analysis shows that agro‐economic modelers aiming to inform the agricultural and development policy debate require better data and analysis on both economic behavior and biophysical drivers. More interdisciplinary modeling efforts are required to cross‐fertilize analyses at different scales.     

A Cross-Cultural Study of Ethics: The United States,Romania, Poland,and the Czech Republic

Global expansion of business into areas defined by different cultural and national environments creates the need for companies to better understand the impact of culture on business operations. Of particular importance is the role country of residence plays. Researchers argue that many cultural differences are malleable, capable of shifting to fit the corporate culture of an organization. However, additional research aimed at identifying different countries’ cultural values is needed. This paper presents the results of a multi-national survey of business students identifying differences in cultural perceptions of ethical behaviors. Differences in personal versus social decision making are discussed.     

Estimating the revenue costs of tax treaties in developing countries

(12764) Petr Janský Marek Šedivý Tax treaties between countries influence how much tax revenues governments receive from multinational enterprises. These treaties often reduce the withholding tax rates on outgoing dividend and interest payments. We provide illustrative estimates of costs for these two taxes for 14 developing countries in sub‐Saharan Africa and Asia in a first multi‐country comparison of this kind. These might be overestimates because we assume that foreign direct investments are not influenced by the tax treaties. We estimate that the highest potential tax revenue losses are within hundreds of millions US$ and around 0.1% of GDP, with Philippines incurring the highest losses both in US$ and relative to GDP. We also find that around 95% of the losses is due to dividends and that only four investor countries—Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland and Singapore—are together responsible for more than half of the losses. We discuss the limitations of these estimates and how future research could improve their quality as well as coverage.     

An empirical investigation of the consumption based Capital Asset Pricing Model using a modified variance-ratio test

A chi-square statistic is constructed that compares variance ratios and mean simple returns from data with those implied by an asset pricing model. The statistic is applied to the Consumption based Capital Asset Pricing Model with time non-separable preferences. It favors habit persistence for annual data, time-separability for quarterly data, and durability for monthly data, respectively. Introduction of time non-separability yields only a marginal improvement. The power of the test is high when alternative hypotheses are formed by varying the relative risk aversion coefficient. It is lower for alternative hypotheses generated by varying the time non-separability parameter, especially for durability. The author would like to thank Craig Burnside, David DeJong, John Duffy, and Steve Husted for their comments on previous versions of the paper.