A partial race to the bottom: corporate tax developments in emerging and developing economies

This paper assembles a new dataset on corporate income tax regimes in 50 emerging and developing economies over 1996–2007 and analyzes their impact on corporate tax revenues and domestic and foreign investment. It computes effective tax rates to take account of special regimes, such as tax holidays, temporarily reduced rates and increased investment allowances. There is evidence of a partial race to the bottom: countries have been under pressure to lower tax rates in order to lure and boost investment. In the case of standard tax systems (i.e. tax rules applying under normal circumstances), the effective tax rate reductions have not been larger than those witnessed in advanced economies, and revenues have held up well over the sample period. However, a race to the bottom is evident among special regimes, most notably in the case of Africa, creating effectively a parallel tax system where rates have fallen to almost zero. Regression analysis reveals higher tax rates adversely affect domestic investment and FDI, but do raise revenues in the short run.     

Attitude toward business environment of auditing,corporate governance and balance between auditing and marketing

The aim of this study was to evaluate the attitude of Iranian auditors toward balance between auditing and marketing with respect to two important components of audit process such as business environment of auditing and corporate governance. The analysis is based on survey data from 257 respondents. To achieve the research aims, we specified four hypotheses based on social theories. The results of this study show that the auditors having positive attitude toward marketing and those who consider it as significant are able, to a large extent, balance spent time for inherent auditing tasks and marketing activities. In addition, the results show that an increase by a unit for the attitude toward business environment results in 0.489 unit increase in attitude toward balance of time spent on marketing and auditing activities, of which 0.396 is direct impact and 0.093 is indirect impact.     

Churn analysis for an Iranian mobile operator

To survive in the challenging environment of a global market, organizations must recognize and analyze customer attitudes. To be competitive, organizations must recognize and forecast customer preferences and behaviors to maximize customer retention before their rivals do so. This research identifies factors that affect customer churn, the single most valuable of an organization's assets. One year's data from call log files relating to 3150 customers were selected randomly from an Iranian mobile operator call-center database. Binomial Logistic Regression was the method of analysis used in this research. The results of this research indicate that a customer's dissatisfaction, their amount of service usage and certain demographic characteristics have the most influence on their decision to remain or churn. The results also imply that customer status (active or inactive status) mediates the relationship between churn and the cause of churn. The Iranian government's current plan to privatize the telecommunications industry without deregulation leads to a non-square competition environment. Deregulation in favor of delegating more authorities of customer care is necessary in order to develop a square private competition environment in the Iranian mobile telecommunications industry.     

苹果中多菌灵的快速测定及方法评估

为评估苹果中多菌灵残留快检试剂盒的适应性,本文以《水果、蔬菜中多菌灵残留的测定高效液相色谱法》（GB/T 23380—2009）为参比方法,选择3家公司生产的快检试剂盒,以《食品快速检测方法评价技术规范》为依据,对快检方法在苹果中的适用性进行评估。结果表明,试剂盒1的灵敏度为66.67%,特异性为100%,假阴性率为33.33%,假阳性率为0,显著性差异为8.1,相对准确率为80%。试剂盒2的灵敏度为100%,特异性为66.67%,假阴性率为0,假阳性率为33.33%,显著性差异为8.1,相对准确率为80%。试剂盒3的灵敏度为100%,特异性为50%,假阴性率0,假阳性率为50%,显著性差异为8.1,相对准确率80%。     

Awareness as a foundation for developing effective spatial data infrastructures

The development of an effective spatial data infrastructure (SDI) often occurs in a fragmented organizational environment requiring a high level of inter-organizational collaboration. Different organizations from various jurisdictions need to work together closely when agreeing on how they will jointly register, store, use and share data and how they will make their data available to the wider society. However, this collaboration is generally regarded as very difficult. For example people often resist data sharing across organizational boundaries due to loss of control, power and independency. Organizational issues are thus considered one of the fundamental constraints to inter-organizational sharing of spatial data.     

Further evidence on the robustness of the Tobit estimator to heteroskedasticity

When the error terms in a Tobit model are heteroskedastic, the MLE which assumes homoskedasticity is inconsistent. For the special case of a constant-term-only model, we investigate the size of the inconsistency. The inconsistency is greater the greater the heteroskedasticity and the greater the degree of censoring (i.e., the greater the number of limit observations). However, the inconsistency is much smaller than in the corresponding truncated-normal model considered by Hurd.     

The Iranian Manager: Work Values and Orientations

Managerial value systems along with individualism-collectivism concepts were examined among 768 managers in Iran. The sample was randomly selected from state, private, and mixed organizations. The participants ranked conformist and sociocentric values high. In addition, the participants displayed a high tendency toward collectivism and a weak commitment to individualism. Furthermore, existential value was highly correlated with individualism-collectivism measures.