Green Tax Reform and Competitiveness

This paper studies a revenue-neutral green tax reform that substitutes energy for wage taxes in an open economy with unemployment. As long as the labour tax rate exceeds the energy tax rate, such a reform will increase employment, reduce the domestic firms' unit cost of production and hence increase international competitiveness and output of the economy. The driving force behind these results is the technological substitution process that a green tax reform will bring about. The resulting reduction in unemployment is welfare increasing since energy, which the country has to buy at its true national opportunity cost, is replaced with labour, whose price is above its social opportunity cost.     

关于拓展我国农村消费信贷的思考

拓展农村消费信贷是建立现代农村金融制度的客观需要,约束我国农村消费信贷发展的因素主要是消费信贷的配套服务机制缺失、农村金融业不发达、农民收入不稳定等。因此,转变消费观念、改善消费信贷环境、增加消费信贷品种、健全社会保障制度、建立现代农村金融制度是拓展我国农村消费信贷的有效对策。     

Outsourcing of Unionized Firms and the Impact of Labor Market Policy Reforms

This paper shows that outsourcing of parts of the workforce in unionized firms leads to wage moderation both in the case of strategic and flexible outsourcing. As long as the share of the outsourced workforce is not too large, this wage‐moderation effect on domestic employment outweighs the direct substitution effect so that domestic employment increases in unionized firms as outsourcing costs fall. With respect to the impact of labor tax reform changes in the wage tax rate, the tax exemption and the unemployment benefit payments affect domestic wage setting in the same way as in the absence of outsourcing. Furthermore, increasing the degree of tax progression by keeping the relative tax burden per worker constant continues to be good for employment. However, except for low outsourcing activities, the impact of these policy measures will become smaller as outsourcing costs fall.     

酒店“形象屏蔽”创新理论与实证研究——以开封开元名都大酒店为例

迄今为止,已有41家国际酒店管理集团、67个品牌抢滩中国酒店市场,加之现阶段受国际金融危机、甲型H1N1流感等诸多因素影响,酒店业的竞争已达到白热化的程度。提出了酒店的＂形象屏蔽＂观点,对酒店＂形象屏蔽＂的影响因素、作用机制进行了深入探究,试图找出规避＂形象屏蔽＂现象的有效策略,同时将这一理论运用于开封开元名都大酒店,对酒店的＂形象屏蔽＂现象进行剖析,找到规避策略,降低客房空置率。     

Religious adherence and county economic growth in the US

We estimate a Barro-type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the American Religious Data Archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the United States at the county-level. Per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income, initial human capital stock, and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence, religious diversity, and regional indicator variables. We also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations, namely Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Mainline Christians, on county economic growth. Our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for US county income growth. We find mixed results for effects of various denominations.     

Ecological Tax Reforms and the Environment: A Note

There is widespread agreement on the ability of ecological tax reforms to improve the environmental quality. This paper, however, points out that a negative marginal impact on the environment cannot be ruled out for revenue-neutral ecological tax reforms in both first-best and second-best frameworks. Therefore, sufficient conditions are derived which ensure the improvement of the environmental quality.     

Uncertainty and Growth of the Firm

Using data from a survey of 1,097 small and medium-sized non-listed Dutch firms we investigate the relation between growth of the firm and uncertainty. We focus on the impact of sales uncertainty on various types of investment. We find that sales uncertainty, measured by the conditional variance, has a mixed impact on various investment decisions. We include an analysis of the relevance of financial structure and firm size on the growth-uncertainty relation.     

Estimation of the equilibrium exchange rate: The CHEER approach

The paper presents the results of an investigation where the concept of a steady-state level of the exchange rate is equated with the capital market equilibrium based on the CHEER approach. The empirical analysis concentrates on Poland, because in this case the assessment of the equilibrium exchange rate is of vital importance. The prospect of the Polish currency joining the ERM2 provokes controversies and requires research into the economic consequences of accession to the EMU. The international transmission mechanisms affecting the Polish economy are identified within the VEqCM framework. The calculations indicate that in the last years of the analyzed sample (i.e. up to December 2006) the zloty/euro exchange rate was slightly overvalued, and the steady-state level was found to have been adjusting to the value of 4.1 zlotys.     

Local Democracy Ltd

<b>Abstractb>

A number of European countries have witnessed a proliferation of local government enterprises in recent years. Norwegian local councillors are seemingly particularly exposed to this ‘enterprise fever’. Our article explores local governments' approaches to the political control of such companies. We observe a reluctance to intervene directly in the affairs of an enterprise, but there is a last-resort preparedness to take more resolute action. Lastly, in contrast to what the prototypical agency model postulates, we find that those who attach strong aspirations of increased capacity to the establishment of companies appear to lack trust in the same companies' performance capability.