Non-cooperative vs. Minimum-Rate Commodity Taxation

This paper demonstrates, within a simple two-country model of commodity taxation and cross-border shopping, that the tax revenue (welfare) effects of a minimum tax requirement depend crucially on the character of the initial non-cooperative tax equilibrium, i.e. whether it is Nash or Stackelberg.     

The risk-return trade-off in human capital investment

In this paper, we analyze investments in human capital in a way which is standard for financial assets, but not (yet) for human capital assets. We study mean-variance plots of human capital assets. We compare the properties of human capital returns using a performance measure and by using tests for mean-variance spanning. Fields differ strongly not only in common rates of return, but also in return per unit of risk. We identify a range of educations that are efficient in terms of investment goods, and a range of educations that may be chosen for consumption purposes.     

Public Policy and Attitudes on Tax Support for Live Artistic Communications Media

Abstract . Hypothesized direct and interaction relationships among the dependent variable willingness to pay more taxes for support of live artistic communications media and the independent variables of past attendance, education, income, leisure time, and liberalism-conservatism are tested. Past enjoyment probably makes people more favorable to tax support. Social policy implications of the results are discussed.     

Determining the cointegrating rank in nonstationary fractional systems by the exact local Whittle approach

We propose to extend the cointegration rank determination procedure of Robinson and Yajima [2002. Determination of cointegrating rank in fractional systems. Journal of Econometrics 106, 217–242] to accommodate both (asymptotically) stationary and nonstationary fractionally integrated processes as the common stochastic trends and cointegrating errors by applying the exact local Whittle analysis of Shimotsu and Phillips [2005. Exact local Whittle estimation of fractional integration. Annals of Statistics 33, 1890–1933]. The proposed method estimates the cointegrating rank by examining the rank of the spectral density matrix of the d$d$th differenced process around the origin, where the fractional integration order, d$d$, is estimated by the exact local Whittle estimator. Similar to other semiparametric methods, the approach advocated here only requires information about the behavior of the spectral density matrix around the origin, but it relies on a choice of (multiple) bandwidth(s) and threshold parameters. It does not require estimating the cointegrating vector(s) and is easier to implement than regression-based approaches, but it only provides a consistent estimate of the cointegration rank, and formal tests of the cointegration rank or levels of confidence are not available except for the special case of no cointegration. We apply the proposed methodology to the analysis of exchange rate dynamics among a system of seven exchange rates. Contrary to both fractional and integer-based parametric approaches, which indicate at most one cointegrating relation, our results suggest three or possibly four cointegrating relations in the data.     

Market Integration of Fish in Europe

This paper examines market integration between fish species in Europe, taking international market integration into account. Based on Juselius (2006) , market integration is found both on the fresh and frozen markets. The Law of One Price is in force on the fresh market within the segments of flatfish and pelagic fish. Assuming transitivity, a loose form of market integration is identified between 13 fresh and seven frozen fish species, and the relative prices are found fairly stable. The policy implication is that catch limitation measures implemented through the Common Fisheries Policy have limited and conditional effects on prices, because of the large size of the market and varying market integration. Therefore, many fishermen are not ‘compensated’ by price increases as a result of catch limitation measures.     

The cointegrated vector autoregressive model with general deterministic terms

In the cointegrated vector autoregression (CVAR) literature, deterministic terms have until now been analyzed on a case-by-case, or as-needed basis. We give a comprehensive unified treatment of deterministic terms in the additive model $X_t=\gamma Z_t+Y_t$, where $Z_t$ belongs to a large class of deterministic regressors and $Y_t$ is a zero-mean CVAR. We suggest an extended model that can be estimated by reduced rank regression, and give a condition for when the additive and extended models are asymptotically equivalent, as well as an algorithm for deriving the additive model parameters from the extended model parameters. We derive asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimators and discuss tests for rank and tests on the deterministic terms. In particular, we give conditions under which the estimators are asymptotically (mixed) Gaussian, such that associated tests are ${\chi }^2$-distributed.     

How Productive Is Workplace Health and Safety?

In this paper, we investigate the causal impact of workplace health and safety practices on firm performance, using Danish longitudinal matched employer–employee data merged with unique cross‐sectional representative firm survey data on work environment conditions. We estimate standard production functions, augmented with workplace environment indicators, addressing both time‐invariant and time‐varying potentially relevant unobservables in the production process. We find positive and large productivity effects of improved physical dimensions of the health and safety environment, specifically, “internal climate” and “monotonous repetitive work”.     

The Path to Service Encounter Performance in Public and Private ‘Bureaucracies’

This article examines the evolution of building societies against a background of environmental change. By the application of specific analytical measures developed by Ansoff five distinct periods of change can be isolated. Key events in the environment have become progressively more novel, less predictable and costlier to deal with, which, in turn, has necessitated both operational and strategic redirection.