FARM ASSESSMENT FOR PROPERTY TAXATION

This paper discusses new assessment proposals for farm property taxation in Ontario. A major ingredient of the proposals is that two different tax bases are considered: current market value and agricultural use value. This paper emphasizes the effects of the proposals on income distribution within agriculture as well as on land allocation. Implementing the proposals is likely to increase the regressive relationship between farm income and farm assessment and to prevent the socially optimal land allocation in the Province.
EVALUATION DE FERMES EN VUE DE TAXATION 1MMOB1L1ERE –// s'agit d'une discussion d'une nouvelle assiette de I'impôl fonder des fermes en Ontario. Une proposition majeure dans le texte est la proposition de deux bases différenles à la cote foncière: valeur courante et valeur d'ex-ploitation agricole. II y a une mise à point qui concernent les conséquences des suggestions faites sur la distribution des revenus agricoles ainsi que sur /'allocation d'usage des terrains. L'application des propositions verrait pro-bablement un accroissement de relation regressive entre le revenu des fermes et la taxation des fermes ainsi que d'empêcher Vutilisation optimale de la distribution des fonds de lerre de la province.     

Sustainable employment: the importance of intrinsically valuable work and an age-supportive climate

The aging workforce emphasizes the importance of sustainable employment, that is the extent to which workers are able and willing to remain working now and in the future . This raises the question how organizations can design work contexts that contribute to sustainable employment. This study investigated the role of a intrinsically motivating job (intrinsic job value) and an age-supportive climate for three indicators of employees’ sustainable employment: employability, work engagement and affective commitment. The questionnaire was completed by 119 office employees (response 35%) of a Dutch public transport organization. A SEM analysis revealed that intrinsic job value was strongly and positively related with all three indicators of sustainable employment for employees of all ages. In contrast, an age-supportive climate was especially important for older employees’ work engagement and affective commitment. This study has implications for practice and for research of sustainable employment, HRM and aging.     

Asset correlations in single factor credit risk models: an empirical investigation

The internal ratings–based (IRB) approach (based on a single risk factor model) was designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) to determine banks’ regulatory credit risk capital. Key inputs of the model – asset correlations – are prescribed by the regulator; relevant banks must use them for capital determination. To ascertain whether these correlations are too onerous or too lenient, empirical asset correlations embedded in loss data spanning different loss milieu were backed out of the regulatory model. Static and rolling correlations over a period of time were compared with the prescribed correlations for developed and developing economies and found to be significantly more conservative.     

Platform-Driven Development of Product Families: Linking Theory with Practice

Firms in many industries increasingly are considering platform-based approaches to reduce complexity and to better leverage investments in new product development, manufacturing, and marketing. However, a clear gap in literature still exists when it comes to discussing the problems and risks related to implementing and managing product families and their underlying platforms. Using a multiple-case approach, we compare three technology-driven companies in their definition of platform-based product families, investigate their reasons for changing to platform-driven development, and analyze how they implemented platform thinking in their development process and which risks they encountered in the process of creating and managing platform-based product families. The field study shows that the companies involved in the study use a homogeneous concept of platform-based product families and that they have similar reasons to turn to platform thinking and to encounter comparable risks. However, the companies analyzed use mainly product architecture as a basis for their platforms (and ignore many of the platform types advocated in literature), while on the other hand they show divergent applications of the platform concept regarding the combinations of product families and market applications. Through this exploratory study, some important white spots in literature became evident as well. In the discussion part of this article these white spots are discussed and directions for future platform research are proposed. The article concludes that given its importance, platform-driven development of product families clearly deserves further research to provide more insight into strategic planning for new products.     

Early Retirement Behaviour in the Netherlands: Evidence From a Policy Reform

In the early 1990s the Dutch labour unions and employer organisations agreed to transform the generous and actuarially unfair early retirement (ER) schemes into less generous and actuarially fair schemes that reward individuals for postponing retirement. The starting dates of these new ER programs varied by industry sector. In this study, we exploit this variation in starting dates to estimate the causal impact of the policy reform on early retirement behaviour. We use a large administrative dataset, the Dutch Income Panel 1989–2000, to estimate hazard rate models for the retirement age. We conclude that the policy reform has indeed induced workers to postpone retirement. Both the wealth effect (lower ER wealth) and the substitution effect (lower implicit taxes on retirement postponement) are significant, the latter being more substantial.