Blockchain in Additive Manufacturing and its Impact on Supply Chains

Additive manufacturing (AM) appears to be a particularly attractive use case for blockchain. This research combines inductive in‐depth interviews with the Delphi method to explore what potentials blockchain technology in AM creates, which adoption barriers firms need to overcome, and how supply chains will be affected by the integration of these two potentially disruptive technologies. The results suggest opportunities that are related to intellectual property (IP) rights management, the monitoring of printed parts throughout their lifecycle, process improvements, and data security. The most important barriers for blockchain adoption in AM are an absence of blockchain‐skilled specialists on the labor market, missing governance mechanisms, and a lack of firm‐internal technical expertise. By addressing important limitations of AM, blockchain is expected to improve the competitiveness of AM in parts’ production, catalyzing the trend toward more decentralized manufacturing resulting in more agile, resilient, and flexible supply chains and reduced logistics costs. Beyond that, blockchain‐based AM platforms are expected to enhance supply chain visibility, drive supply chain digitalization, support supply chain finance, and contribute to the emergence of shared factory systems.     

Wirkungen einer EU–weiten Verlustverrechnung auf das Steueraufkommen

Seit einigen Jahren stellt der Europäische Gerichtshof vermehrt Regelungen der nationalen Steuersysteme in Hinblick darauf in Frage, ob sie mit dem EG-Recht konform gehen. Im aktuellen Fall Marks & Spencer entscheidet der Gerichtshof, ob Konzerne Verluste ausländischer Töchter mit inländischen Gewinnen verrechnen dürfen. Welche Wirkung hätte eine EU-weite Verlustverrechnung auf das deutsche Steueraufkommen?Prof. Dr. Clemens Fuest, 36, ist Direktor des Finanzwissenschaftlichen Forschungsinstituts an der Universität zu Köln und Mitglied des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats beim Bundesministerium der Finanzen; Thomas Hemmelgarn, 30, Dipl.-Volkswirt, ist Mitarbeiter an demselben Institut; Fred Ramb, 39, Dipl.-Volkswirt, ist Mitarbeiter der Deutschen Bundesbank, Economic Research Centre, in Frankfurt. Dieser Artikel repräsentiert die persönliche Auffassung der Autoren und entspricht nicht notwendigerweise der Position der Deutschen Bundesbank oder ihrer Mitarbeiter.     

Exact and approximate D-optimal designs in polynomial regression

If the sample sizen is large enough, then the exact polynomial regression designs obtained by rounding the weights of the approximate D-optimal design to integral multiples of 1/n are D-optimal. This was shown by alaevskiî (1966) and Gaffke (1987). In this note, an efficient algorithm to determine the minimum sample sizen _d for a polynomial model of degreed is derived from a condition given by Huang (1987). Under an additional assumption we show that the conditions of Gaffke and Huang are equivalent; we verify the additional assumption for polynomial degreed40.     

Why Capital Income Taxes Survive in Open Economies: The Role of Multinational Firms

This paper discusses the role of multinational firms and double taxation treaties for corporate income taxation in open economies. We show that it is optimal for a small open economy to levy positive corporate income taxes if multinational firms are taxed according to the full taxation after deduction system or the foreign tax credit system. Positive corporate taxes also occur in the asymmetric case where some countries apply the exemption system and others apply the tax credit system. If all countries apply the exemption system, the optimal corporate income tax is zero. We also show that, under tax competition, corporate income taxes are not necessarily too low from the perspective of the economy as a whole. While the undertaxation result is confirmed for the case of the exemption system, tax rates may also be inefficiently high if the deduction or the credit systems are applied.     

Chebyshev interpolation for parametric option pricing

Recurrent tasks such as pricing, calibration and risk assessment need to be executed accurately and in real time. We concentrate on parametric option pricing (POP) as a generic instance of parametric conditional expectations and show that polynomial interpolation in the parameter space promises to considerably reduce run-times while maintaining accuracy. The attractive properties of Chebyshev interpolation and its tensorized extension enable us to identify broadly applicable criteria for (sub)exponential convergence and explicit error bounds. The method is most promising when the computation of the prices is most challenging. We therefore investigate its combination with Monte Carlo simulation and analyze the effect of (stochastic) approximations of the interpolation. For a wide and important range of problems, the Chebyshev method turns out to be more efficient than parametric multilevel Monte Carlo. We conclude with a numerical efficiency study.     

Steuerpolitik und Wirtschaftswachstum

The design of the tax system matters for economic growth. During times of economic crisis, tax instruments such as temporary tax cuts can be used to soften adverse effects on the economy by stimulating private and corporate spending. However, empirical evidence suggests that the overall impact of short term tax policies is limited. In the long run, the structure of the tax system is essential to building up an investment friendly and innovation-stimulating environment, which will promote sustainable economic growth.     

THE MEANING OF FAILED REPLICATIONS: A REVIEW AND PROPOSAL

The welcome rise of replication tests in economics has not been accompanied by a consensus standard for determining what constitutes a replication. A discrepant replication, in current usage of the term, can signal anything from an unremarkable disagreement over methods to scientific incompetence or misconduct. This paper proposes a standard for classifying one study as a replication of some other study. It is a standard that places the burden of proof on a study to demonstrate that it should have obtained identical results to the original, a conservative standard that is already used implicitly by many researchers. It contrasts this standard with decades of unsuccessful attempts to harmonize terminology, and argues that many prominent results described as replication tests should not be described as such. Adopting a conservative standard like this one can improve incentives for researchers, encouraging more and better replication tests.     

With which countries do tax havens share information?

In recent years tax havens and offshore financial centres have come under increasing political pressure to cooperate with other countries in matters of taxation and efforts to crowd back tax evasion and avoidance. As a result many tax havens have signed tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs). In order to comply with OECD standards tax havens are obliged to sign at least 12 TIEAs with other countries. This paper investigates how tax havens have chosen their partner countries. We ask whether they have signed TIEAs with countries to which they have strong economic links or whether they have systematically avoided doing this, so that information exchange remains ineffective. We analyse 565 TIEAs signed by tax havens in the years 2008–2011 and find that on average tax havens have signed more TIEAs with countries to which they have stronger economic links. Our analysis thus suggests that tax havens do not systematically undermine tax information exchange by signing TIEAs with irrelevant countries. However, this does not mean that they exchange information with all important partner countries.