Redistributive impact of indirect tax reforms: Greece, 1988–2002

This paper assesses the distributional impact of indirect taxes among Greek households between 1988 and 2002, a period that coincides with the introduction of significant reforms in the tax system due to EU membership. The highly differentiated indirect tax structure prevailing at the beginning of the period had distributional benefits over the more simplified 2002 tax structure. The overall inequality of the after‐tax welfare distribution has increased by 6–12½ per cent and changes in the indirect tax system seem to explain about half of this increase. The paper also applies a recent method of measuring the distributional impact of relative price changes caused by changes in tax rates of commodities (Newbery, 1995) and establishes that indirect tax reforms introduced since 1988 had an adverse impact on the distribution of purchasing power, which nevertheless seems to be very small.     

Marketing and the law

Marketing decisions are particularly vulnerable to legal rulings made in both the courts and the legislatures. The effective management of those legal implications challenges the modern marketing professional. Understanding marketing’s overall legal environment, including its governing case law, regulatory statutes, and future trends is essential. This review will provide analyses of recent court cases and legislation with particular emphasis on creatively assisting the marketer’s management of the legal factor.     

Accounting information and the valuation of Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEOs)

This study investigates the association between publicly available information disclosed in the SEO prospectus and offer prices of SEOs, as well as the association between this type of publicly available information and stock returns subsequent to an SEO after controlling for self-selection bias. The empirical evidence shows that disclosure of the planned uses of the SEO proceeds reveals value-relevant information which has been incorporated by the underwriters in setting the offer prices. Control for self-selection bias appears necessary to obtain unbiased estimates in the regression model explaining the determinants of offer price in SEOs.     

Price Adjustment Policies in Procurement Contracting: An Analysis of Bidding Behavior

The fluctuations in fuel prices over the past decade led a number of government agencies to introduce price adjustment clauses in procurement contracting. Those clauses were primarily designed to reduce contractors’ uncertainty without considering the impact of such initiatives on bidding and the budget. We analyze a newly constructed, detailed panel of observations on bids for construction contracts and compare bidding behavior across periods and projects, and across items within projects. Estimates from a difference‐in‐differences approach, indicate that bidding becomes more aggressive and less dispersed after the implementation of this policy. The difference is more pronounced when we consider itemized bids than overall project bids. Alternative techniques of regression discontinuity and nonparametric estimation are applied and yield consistent results.     

The relevance of quantifiable audit qualifications in the valuation of IPOs

How useful are audit qualifications to financial statement users? We analyze a sample of 204 firms that went public at the Athens Stock Exchange over the period 1987–2002. For 149 of these firms, auditors report quantitative estimates of the amount by which assets are overstated and/or liabilities are understated in reported financial statements. We find that underwriters and their affiliated analysts do not incorporate the negative information provided by these qualifications into offer prices and earnings forecasts. Investors, however, appear to efficiently impound the negative implications of the audit qualifications into stock market prices within the first day of trading. The results suggest that underwriters tend to align their interests with the interests of their clients, the old stockholders, at the expense of the new stockholders. They also suggest that the practice of reporting quantifiable qualifications in audit reports is valuable to investors given that they are disclosed by an expert.     

The effect of information on the bidding and survival of entrants in procurement auctions

In government procurement auctions of construction contracts, entrants are typically less informed and bid more aggressively than incumbent firms. This bidding behavior makes them more susceptible to losses affecting their prospect of survival. In April of 2000, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation started releasing the internal cost estimates to complete highway construction projects. Using newly developed quantile regression approaches, this paper examines the impact of the policy change on aggressive entrants. First, we find that the information release eliminates the bidding differential between entrants and incumbents attributed to informational asymmetries. Second, we argue that the policy change affects the prospects of survival of entrants in the market. We find that those who used to exit the market relatively soon are now staying 37% longer, while at the median level bidding duration increased by roughly 68%. The policy has the potential to encourage entry in government procurement auctions and thus increase competition.     

An Integrated System Supporting Virtual Consortia in the Construction Sector

Work in today's economic organizations is either performed through the execution of continuous operations or through the implementation of one-off projects; hence one can distinguish between "operation-centric" and "project-centric" business environments. New information and communication technologies facilitate the introduction of innovative organizational structures in both environments. Based on the term "virtual organization," which is used for describing the new organizational structures in operation-centric environments, we introduce the term "virtual consortium" for project-centric environments and provide an analysis of the business processes of a virtual consortium. We concentrate on the construction sector, as one of the most suitable application domains to test the new concept and related systems. Focusing on one of the most critical processes of a virtual consortium, the bidding/tendering process, we review the existing information systems available on the Internet, which support this process for construction projects. Our results show that although there are a substantial number of systems that support searching for call for tenders, few of them provide support for other vital elements of the bidding/tendering process, such as robust collaboration facilities for the virtual consortium formation and for the management of the bid. We then present the SupplyPoint system, which has been developed in order to electronically support and automate the whole tendering/bidding process of virtual consortia. SupplyPoint provides-in addition to what existing systems already do-a collaboration platform that facilitates, in a virtual manner, the formation of consortia.     

Local labour market information on disability

This article considers recent policy developments impacting upon the need for up-to-date information relating to disabled people. In examining data provided by existing sources and requirements for additional information, it considers debates on definitions of disability and how definitions and the framing of questions determine the type and quality of information available. Attention is also given to ways of filling the major information gaps and potential areas of research.