The Tax Man Cometh: Constitutional Principles for Tax Enforcement

Passage of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) overhaul bill in 1998 reflects the depth of American taxpayer frustration with the agency. We bring a constitutional, or rules of the game, perspective to tax enforcement. We examine political costs and benefits and agency discretion as reasons why tax enforcement by the government might deviate from the preferences of a representative citizen. We also examine prospects for reform. Lasting reform must alter the rules for deciding tax enforcement policy or the political pressures which yield excessive enforcement today will reemerge in the future.     

Tourism and conservation

Assessing the impact of tourism on environment is notoriously difficult, and is often hindered by emotional factors or considerations of private interest. Further, data on tourist movements and volumes, particularly on internal tourist movements, and on impact itself, are scarce. It is thus difficult to provide any overview of the environmental impacts of tourists, whether in one country or worldwide. This article examines these relationships so far as data allow, largely within the framework of the UK experience.     

Life among the environmentalists: An elaboration on Wildavsky's “economics and environment/rationality and ritual”

The author elaborates the ideas presented by Wildavsky in “Economics and Environment/Rationality and Ritual” to clarify their meaning for the ecological debate and for the accounting profession. The differences between economic and environmental rationality are further clarified and the contribution of both ways of thinking to social discourse is suggested.     

我国非煤矿山风险管理现状分析与对策研究

随着我国非煤矿山安全生产水平的不断提升,风险管理发挥着巨大的作用,但目前仍然存在一些问题。本文就这些问题进行分析、探究,并就如何提高风险管理水平提出了一些建议。     

Pricing real assets with costly search

Markets for many real assets are characterized by sequentialsearch followed by bilateral bargaining between matched buyersand sellers. For a category of real assets, the joint, intertemporalvaluation problems of buyers, owners, and sellers and the associatedNash pricing function are solved explicity. In equilibrium,the average transaction price is a noisy, proportional randomwalk, and the liquidity premium is positive for matched owners.Depending on the values of the parameters, the liquidity ofoptimal development with costly search, the optimal exercisepoint, cost of development, and value of the undeveloped assetare calculated analytically. With search, development can occursooner and undeveloped assets have lower market values thanthe standard solution without search.     

Financial and industrial structure with agency

A subgame perfect Nash equilibrium is characterized for an industrywith dissipative costs of agency. In sequence, firms can enterthe industry, raise capital with external debt and/or equity,invest in a capital-intensive technology of dissipate capitalin perquisites, and finally produce output. For plausible valuesof two critical parameters, some firms forego in equilibriuminvestments with positive net present values. Although moremanagers would like their firms to invest in the capital-intensivetechnology, they cannot raise the required cash in the capitalmarket. In equilibrium, the industry can have both a profitablecore of large, secure, capital-intensive firms, with some debtbut no unique optimal capital structure, and a competitive fringeof small, risky, labor-intensive firms. Even as the cost ofentry converges to zero, capital-intensive firms can earn extraordinaryprofits, while all labor-intensive firms fail. With costly agency,access to capital can become a barrier to entry.     

Equilibrium and options on real assets

In aggregate, options on real and financial assets can havevery different properties. Typically, the good or service producedby a real asset has a finite elasticity of demand, and developershave finite capacities. Also, the supply of options can be limited,and developers can be less than perfectly competitive. In asubgame, perfect Nash equilibrium with these properties, theoptimal exercise policy, and resulting values of developed andundeveloped assets are calculated explicitly. The novel comparativestatics are discussed in detail.     

Agency and brokerage of real assets in competitive equilibrium

Brokerage contracts for many categories of real assets are characterizedby a common, constant commission rate payable upon sale, exclusiveagency, and contractual asking prices. For a large market insteady state, these conventional contracts produce in equilibriumno agency problem between a broker and his clients. Each brokerspends the same time or effort selling each client's asset asthe broker would spend on his own assets. As in standard agencyproblems, extra effort by a broker generates first-order stochasticallydominant distributions of bids by potential buyers. Unlike standardagency problems, each broker can allocate his time or effortbetween selling the assets of his multiple clients and searchingfor new clients in competition with other brokers. Because brokers'time spent searching for new sellers is dissipative, entry bybrokers is excessive in equilibrium.