On taxing capital income with income shifting

We examine a linear capital income tax and a nonlinear labor income tax in a two-type model where individuals live for two periods. We assume that taxes are paid only in the second period in which the agents receive both labor and capital income and may shift income from labor to capital. The two types of individuals may differ with respect to wage rate and initial resource endowments. In the absence of income shifting, endowment variation motivates a capital income tax which would not exist where there is pure wage rate variation. In the latter circumstance, income shifting would indeed establish a case for a capital income tax while adding variation in resource endowments would ambiguously affect the case. The asymmetric information case for a capital income tax must be traded off against distortionary effects not only on savings, but also on labor as an agent may earn labor income which is reported and taxed as capital income.      

What's New in Finance?

This paper prepares a list of the 300 most cited articles published in the area of Finance during the period 2000–2006. The articles are ranked based on the ratio of the number of citations and the number of years since publication, as of August 2007. Citation data come from Google Scholar and cover all articles in 29 Finance journals and Finance articles in 21 Economics, six Accounting, and two Operations research journals. The paper also reports the number of highly cited articles by number of authors, journal, research area, and institution.     

Industry equilibrium with outside financing and moral hazard: Implications for market integration

In this paper, we study industry equilibrium under the assumptions that (1) firms need outside financing and (2) they have a moral hazard problem in taking potentially excessive risks. We characterize an industry equilibrium with credit rationing, where firms choose not to take risks, and compare this to the industry equilibrium in the absence of credit rationing. In both cases, we show that competition increases and prices decline as markets integrate. However, in markets with credit rationing there is typically more exit, a smaller decline in prices and, most strikingly, the market value of the industry increases rather than decreases.     

Performance Schweizerischer Verwaltungsräte anhand der Aktienkursentwicklung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Initial conditions or process of development? Critical incidents in the early stages of new ventures

Past research on new venture creation has focussed on initial conditions of start–ups or on the process of evolution. However, few studies have investigated the transitory stage when initial conditions changeover to a process of evolution. The aim of this paper is to investigate critical incidents infant new ventures face in this transitory stage. The paper covers two areas. First, a review of selected process models of new venture creation is conducted. Results from this review concludes that existing models as described in the literature are associated with several weaknesses: they oversimplify the phenomenon studied as they most often focus on one aspect only and they do not deal with how entrepreneurs adapt to specific situational conditions. Furthermore, the review indicates that the starting–point of a process often is hard to specify and characterize. Second, an empirical study based on the critical incident technique is reported on. On the basis of interviews with founders and entrepreneurial service providers related to the companies 65 critical incidents were identified. This equals an average of 8.1 incidents per company during a period of 6–18 months. Financing and recruiting were the most frequent and most important activities to manage. Then follows reference/first customer in third place. A common pattern of occurring incidents was identified among the ventures. However, in relation to the first round of venture capital financing a strategic choice was made. Either the companies followed a growth strategy and recruitment and organizational development were key goals, or the company focussed on building a patent portfolio. A tentative model is suggested that describes this process in detail.     

What Makes Investors Trade?

A unique data set allows us to monitor the buys, sells, and holds of individuals and institutions in the Finnish stock market on a daily basis. With this data set, we employ Logit regressions to identify the determinants of buying and selling activity over a two-year period. We find evidence that investors are reluctant to realize losses, that they engage in tax-loss selling activity, and that past returns and historical price patterns, such as being at a monthly high or low, affect trading. There also is modest evidence that life-cycle trading plays a role in the pattern of buys and sells.     

On Pollution Permit Banking and Market Power

We consider a pollution permit market with a large firm and fringe of competitive firms. To smooth compliance towards a long-run emissions goal, firms are initially allocated a stock (i.e., bank) of permits that can be gradually consumed. We first show how the large firm can credibly manipulate the spot market in subgame-perfect equilibrium. Motivated by features observed in the US market for sulfur dioxide emissions, we then show that the introduction of stock transactions has no effects on market power, but that forward trading and incomplete observability of stock holdings do have pro-competitive effects. Both authors are also Research Associates at the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.     

Property rights in conflict: wild berry-picking and the Nordic tradition of allemansrätt

Wild berries became a valuable export article in Sweden and Finland at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time, property rights over wild berries were not explicitly defined, and in both countries, proposals were made to subject the berries to the landowner. The proposals did not pass and wild berry-picking on another's land continued, as seen from today's perspective, to be available to everyone. This paper looks at the socioeconomic context of wild berry-picking, and asks whether the principle of allemansrätt – a Nordic tradition of public access to nature – played a role in why wild berries did not become private property. By focusing on the Finnish penal code debate of 1888 and the process of stabilising the property rights, the paper rejects the idea of continuity. It argues that (1) the traditional allemansrätt is debatable as a historical concept and shows how (2) the contingent political process created the conditions, and economic imagination the impetus, that wild berries were not privatised but turned into an open resource.