Firm-level determinants of tax evasion in transition economies

Business tax evasion is an important issue for governments. Yet the factors that determine business tax evasion have not been sufficiently examined in the literature in general, and in transition contexts in particular. To address this gap, this study uses the WB/EBRD Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) database with a sample of over 12,692 firms from 26 transition economies. Applying various modelling strategies, we argue that tax evasion is a function of firm-level and institutional-level variables. We contribute to the literature by providing robust evidence showing that the perceived tax burden has a positive impact on tax evasion. We also find that the tax evasive behaviour of firms is positively influenced by low trust in government and in the judicial system as well as by higher perceptions of corruption and higher compliance costs. We find that smaller firms, individual businesses and firms in sectors that are less visible to the tax administration are more likely to get involved in evasive behaviour. Overall, institutional factors play an important role in determining firms’ tax evasion behaviour in transition economies. This finding has important policy implications.     

基于融资考虑对股权回报率确定方法的选择

上市公司在股票市场上融资时面临两类融资考虑问题:其一是资本结构的"溢出效应",它提高了股权回报率;其二是市场投资者的认知偏差,它可能提高或者降低要求的股权回报率。FAR与NEER是确定股权回报率的两类截然不同的方法:FAR有利于实现公司价值最大化目标,而NEER能够促使短期股价最大化。在通过比较这两类方法的异同后指出,在不同的融资考虑组合下,公司应根据自身情况选择适合的方法确定项目投资要求的股权回报率。     

COMMUNICATION ABOUT FUTURE POLICY RATES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: A SURVEY

We discuss the theoretical rationale for central bank communication about future policy rates, either as part of inflation targeting or in the form of forward guidance. We also summarize both actual central bank communication about future policy rates and empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these types of communication. We argue that there is a disconnect between the theory and practice of forward guidance, as theory assumes commitment on the part of the central bank, while in practice central banks generally do not commit. Future theoretical research on forward guidance should therefore take the absence of commitment by central banks into account.     

Recurrence plots analysis of the CNY exchange markets based on phase space reconstruction

The employment of autocorrelation-based transformation to study the dynamics of the exchange rate system is meaningful because it benefits for chaotic prediction on the basis that the transformation from an exchange rate sequence to its associated autocorrelation sequence is reversible. This paper examines the influence of autocorrelation-based transformation on the systemic dynamics using exchange rates of CNY against different currencies among USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, MYR and RUB. First, we construct recurrence plots of exchange rate return sequences and autocorrelation sequences with a fixed sliding window length of 20. The recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) shows that the exchange rate return sequences exhibit lower degrees of determinism than the autocorrelation sequences. Further, by analyzing the RQA measures with bootstrap techniques and box plots, we reveal that the RQA measures of the exchange rate return systems and the autocorrelation sequence systems are mostly significant, and the vertical structures of recurrence plots of autocorrelation sequences are more sensitive to the shuffles of bootstrap techniques. Finally, we investigate the evolution of RQA measures with the changes of sliding window lengths. The analysis shows that appropriately adjusting the sliding window length can increase the systemic determinism.     

Do terror attacks affect the dollar-pound exchange rate? A nonparametric causality-in-quantiles analysis

While much significant research has been done to study the effects of terror attacks on stock markets, less is known about the response of exchange rates to terror attacks. We suggest a non-parametric causality-in-quantiles test to study whether (relative) terror attacks affect exchange-rate returns and volatility. Using data on the dollar-pound exchange rate to illustrate the test, we show that terror attacks mainly affect the lower and upper quantiles of the conditional distribution of exchange-rate returns, while misspecified (due to nonlinearity and structural breaks) linear Granger causality test show no evidence of predictability. Terror attacks also affect almost all quantiles of the conditional distribution of exchange-rate volatility (except the extreme upper-end), with the significance of the effect being particularly strong for the lower quantiles. The importance of terror attacks is shown to hold also under an alternative measure of volatility and for an important emerging-market exchange rate as well.     

基于计算机仿真的仓库与停车场布局方案评价

首先明确了系统的研究对象及设施布局方案,提出了评价指标体系。通过基于布局方案的系统状态变化流程图的分析和状态变化间隔时间的确定,建立了仓库与停车场作业系统仿真模型。运用离散系统仿真技术中事件调度法提出了实现系统状态变化的基本步骤,并通过状态变化间隔时间设置、布局方案设置、仿真演示三个模块完成了仿真模型的程序实现。最后运用仿真模型得出了布局方案中装卸月台、车辆、停车场等相关指标,并分析评价了方案的优劣性。     

全国社会保障基金的风格资产配置研究——基于经济周期视角

根据美林证券的投资时钟理论,结合我国宏观经济的月度指标,将我国宏观经济状态划分为四个阶段,同时将全国社会保障基金的投资细分为10个类别的风格资产,基于经济周期视角对这10类风格资产的收益率状况进行分析,结果表明：在复苏阶段,股票资产的收益率最高,并且不同风格股票在收益率方面的差异不大,表现出齐涨的态势;在过热阶段,不同风格股票在收益率方面表现出较大的差异,小盘股的收益率表现最好,尤其是小盘成长股的收益率最高;在滞胀阶段,最安全的资产应该是现金资产,倘若考虑到通货膨胀率的因素,其实际收益率甚至为负;在衰退阶段,债券类资产的表现最好。同时,基于不同策略的资产配置方案的累计收益率比较结果表明：不同经济周期下的资产配置方案可以显著提高资产组合收益率。     

人民币汇率波动对NFDI波动的影响及其检验

本文通过对我国NFDI资本流动性及其波动性的计算,检验了人民币/美元汇率波动对NFDI波动性的关系。通过实证分析表明,人民币汇率的波动将导致NFDI资本流动的明显不稳定。在理论研究的基础上,引申出其政策含义：在国际资本流动不断加大的今天,我们必须维护人民币/美元汇率的稳定,这样对于有效引导NFDI的资本流动和维护金融稳定都具有重要的意义。     

Proposal for calculating regulatory capital requirements for reverse mortgages

In the current context in which many people worry about the sustainability of pension systems, reverse mortgages are gaining popularity because they are a way to supplement elderly people's incomes. However, it is necessary to provide banks with an adequate risk measurement and management procedure for reverse mortgages to increase the commercialization of these products, which will result in greater well-being for the retirement age population. In this paper, we propose a method to measure risk and estimate the regulatory capital requirements for a portfolio of reverse mortgages owned by a financial institution according to Basel II and III. The method considers house price risk, mortality risk and interest rate risk; consequently, regulatory capital requirements need to be computed using a Monte Carlo simulation procedure. The proposed method is general and can accommodate several scenarios for reverse mortgage specifications, including fixed or variable mortgage rates and different income stream schemes (with the lump sum as a particular case). The results for the U.K. show that reverse mortgage providers face higher risk when the lender initially advances a higher amount, with the lump-sum case indicating the highest risk, for relatively younger borrowers, the female population, higher interest rates and floating mortgage rates.     

Institutional determinants of the effective tax rate in G7 and BRIC countries

This paper studies the relationship between the corporate effective tax rate (ETR) and several institutional factors in the G7 and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). We use the panel data methodology with a data sample of 25,878 listed firms in 2010–2018. The results show that all the variables analyzed have an effect on the ETR. Some—such as the statutory tax rate, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and open markets—affect all countries, whereas others, such as corruption control and economic freedom, affect only the BRIC countries, and gross domestic product growth, the deficit, and gross debt only affect the G7 countries.