Incentives and Information Exchange in International Taxation

The exchange of taxpayer-specific information between national tax authorities has recently emerged as a key and controversial topic in international tax policy discussions, most notably with the OECD's harmful tax practices project and the EU's savings tax initiative. This paper analyzes the effects of information exchange and withholding taxes, recognizing that countries which agree to exchange information do not forfeit the ability to levy withholding taxes, and also focusing in particular on the effects of innovative revenue-sharing arrangements. Amongst the findings are that: (i) the transfer of withholding tax receipts to the residence country, as planned in the European Union, has no effect on equilibrium tax rates, but acts purely as a lump-sum transfer; (ii) in contrast, allocating some of the revenue from information exchange to the source country—counter to usual practice (though no less so than the EU agreement)—would have adverse strategic effects on total revenue; (iii) nevertheless, any withholding tax regime is Pareto dominated by information exchange combined with appropriate revenue sharing; and, in particular, (iv) sharing of the additional revenues raised from information provided, while efficiency-reducing, could be in the interests of large countries as a means of persuading small countries to provide that information voluntarily. JEL Code: H77, H87, F42     

Spatial Competition and Shopping Externalities: Evidence from the Housing Market

In search markets, greater spatial concentration of sellers increases price competition. At the same time, though, a greater concentration of sellers can create a shopping externality by attracting more buyers to the site. Using housing sales data, we test for spatial competition and shopping externality effects on prices and marketing time. We find that they reflect both competitive and shopping externality effects from surrounding houses, although the relative strength varies with how fresh the house is in the market, the freshness of surrounding houses, and the phase of the market cycle. New listings have the strongest shopping externality effect on neighboring houses that have been on the market for some time. Vacant houses have their strongest competition effects in the declining market and externality effects in the rising market. Fresh houses on the market reap little benefit from shopping externalities in all phases of the market cycle.     

国内金融市场完全开放对国有商业银行的影响

按照入世协定书中的开放时问表，我国在入世5年后也即2006年底将实行金融业的全面开放。本文认为，我国金融市场完全开放将对国内商业银行带来深远影响：一是在政策层面，经济政策、金融政策、配套政策的进一步开放将使金融业的进入门槛降低，从而带来竞争主体的多元和竞争的更加市场化；二是在市场层面，客户的金融知识的普及和客户的议价能力的提高造成客户对银行需求也在不断提高；三是在竞争层面上，竞争主体、竞争模式和竞争手段的改变将使银行业面临更为复杂的竞争局面。为应对上述影响，国有商业银行应根据自身优势，扬长避短，根据不同情况，综合运用不同战略，以期达到持续发展的目标。     

当前我国国内横向税收竞争的实证分析

目前我国理论研究的不足阻碍了对现实生活中各类税收竞争问题的有效治理。为此,着眼于我国国内横向税收竞争的实践,对其进行总结和归类,剖析其背后的体制与制度原因,评价其经济效应,并由此提出促进我国国内横向税收有序发展的政策措施是必要的。     

经济全球化条件下我国市场结构问题的理论思考和对策建议

经济全球化对我国市场结构的影响集中体现为跨国公司的进入和WTO规则的执行对我国行业中企业之间垄断竞争关系的影响.本文就此对开放条件下我国市场结构有效竞争模式进行理论思考,重点探讨了维护国家经济安全与促进国内市场开放、反对垄断与发展规模经济、促进竞争与防止竞争过度等方面问题,并在此基础上提出优化我国市场结构的政策建议.     

我国银行业改革与引进外资的开放竞争策略

针对我国银行业面临的问题和外资银行进入后的竞争压力,本文通过分析几种不同改革思路后认为,我国银行业改革的核心问题是产权和公司治理,两者紧密相连,产权改革是为了获得良好的公司治理,私有化和引入外资都是可供选择的产权改革方式之一,理论上不存在何者更优.国有商业银行改革的关键在于改变国有独资所有权结构为多元投资结构,可供选择的方案有不改变所有权性质的多个国有投资主体的单一所有制和引进包括国有、民营、外资参股的多元所有制.鉴于我国银行业目前的特点,外资参股并不是一种最优的选择,引进外资银行的正确策略是:独资优于合作,合作优于合资.     

Does Store Brand Patronage Improve Store Patronage?

Review of Industrial Organization - We investigate the relationship between a household's store brandpatronage and store patronage through its impact on store revenuesand profits. The nature of...     

Revenue Sharing versus Expenditure Sharing in a Federal System

Problems of intergovernmental policy coordination can take many forms and are becoming increasingly important with continuing economic integration. In this paper we focus on the fiscal competition problem where the non-cooperative choice of taxes and transfers among governments typically leads to a suboptimal outcome. We look at the effect of two widely used corrective policies: revenue sharing and expenditure sharing (or intergovernmental matching grants). Our main result is that these two corrective policies have opposite effects depending on the form of competition between governments, namely whether governments compete in taxes or expenditures. More precisely, for any form of competition, revenue sharing is desirable exactly when expenditure sharing is not and vice versa. The implication is that the choice of the optimal corrective policy requires a complete understanding of the underlying non-cooperative behavior among governments. Our second main result is that neither revenue sharing or expenditure sharing can be sustained as a Nash equilibrium among governments, although all governments would benefit from one of these two corrective policies. Central intervention is therefore inevitable unless governments can pre-commit to the optimal corrective policy before setting their fiscal policies.     

建筑企业如何开展人才管理

建筑企业实施人才管理十分重要，建筑企业是否成功，很重要的因素是企业经理是否具有丰富的领导才能，负责日常运营的企业管理是否具有高素质的“将才”，基层第一线生产是否成为冲锋陷阵的先锋。建筑企业必须切实制度好人才管理策略，建立健全人才储备库，善于控制人才，吸引高素质人才，并引入竞争机制，优胜劣汰。     

Audit Firm Tenure and Audit Quality in a Constrained Market

We examine the relation between audit quality and audit firm tenure in the Iranian audit market, which is constrained by government policies that create intense competition for clients among many small audit firms. We develop arguments that these circumstances create cost pressures that entrench low audit quality and render auditors' plans more predictable to managers wishing to misstate their accounts. Using publicly available data for the audits of listed companies in Iran prior to mandatory audit firm rotation and the incidence of misstated financial reports identified by the Iranian Association of Certified Public Accountants Inspection Office, we find that the likelihood of a misstatement is lowest in the first two years of audit firm tenure. We also find that the likelihood of misstatement is not associated with the year preceding a mandatory audit firm rotation, suggesting outgoing auditor effort is not sensitive to the prospect of subsequent revelations of deficiencies. Although our results from a pre-mandatory rotation period show that frequent rotations appear to improve the financial reporting quality in our sample, we are wary of interpreting these results as support for the mandatory audit firm rotation policy in Iran. Rather, we suggest this is a peculiar consequence of deficiencies in audit quality inherent in the Iranian market.