A basic tool to assess tax administration strength in emerging Europe

Large tax compliance gaps, together with the need to generate additional tax revenue have put a premium on tax administration reform in emerging Europe. The key features of an efficient tax administration are well established, but an objective assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of tax administrations have been lacking. This paper proposes a simple index of tax administration strength, based on objective indicators reflecting key organizational and operational aspects of revenue administrations relative to international best practice. A diagnostic test is then conducted to assess the performance of the proposed index in its ability to predict variations in tax collection efficiency in emerging Europe.     

Financial integration and banking crisis. A critical analysis of restrictions on capital flows

We investigate the effect of financial integration on a banking crisis. In contrast to existing works, we allow for capital restrictions while studying the impact of financial integration on a banking crisis. Using firm-level lending and borrowing information in the global market of syndicated loans; we generate aggregate measures of financial integration and examine how countries with capital flow restrictions thrive in the wake of a banking crisis. We concentrate on basic network measures of integration for a panel of 62 countries that allow for capital restriction at any time within the sample period. Financial integration increases the incidence of a banking crisis, and capital restrictions worsen a banking crisis. However, capital restrictions reduce the negative impact of financial integration on the incidence of a banking crisis. Thus, financial integration becomes beneficial when countries allow for some forms of capital control.     

Place Matters: (Dis)embeddedness and Child Labourers’ Experiences of Depersonalized Bullying in Indian Bt Cottonseed Global Production Networks

Journal of Business Ethics - Engaging Polanyi’s embeddedness–disembeddedness framework, this study explored the work experiences of Bhil children employed in Indian Bt cottonseed GPNs....     

Multidimensional inequality with variable population size

Summary. We study inequality in a context of more than one variable by extending a celebrated result of Hardy, Littlewood and Pölya (1934) to the case of distributions with variable population sizes, whose individuals differ in many characteristics besides income. A new ordering between rectangular matrices, representing such distributions, is provided and characterized by convexity theory.Received: 19 October 2003, Revised: 7 September 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D31, D63, I31.I am indebted to C. d’Aspremont, V. Dardanoni, G. Koshevoy, K. Mosler and especially J. Weymark and an anonymous referee for many useful comments.     

GEM research: achievements and challenges

This article analyzes the content and evolution of research based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project. We conducted a rigorous search of articles published in journals within the Thomson Reuters’ Social Sciences Citation Index^® through an exploratory analysis focused on articles using GEM data. The main findings of this study reveal that the institutional approach is the most commonly used conceptual framework. Also, although there are still few academic publications using GEM data, the number of articles is increasing, as are opportunities for future research.     

Navigating the extended reach: Target experiences of cyberbullying at work

With research on workplace bullying having so far focused on face-to-face interactions via proximate physical presence, cyberbullying remains to be understood. Through a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry of target experiences in India's IT and ITES-BPO sector, the paper not only addresses this gap but also highlights the distinctive features of workplace cyberbullying. The core theme of ‘navigating the extended reach’ which subsumes the major themes of ‘being pursued, receiving a settled score, feeling “haunted” and “hemmed in” and drawing advantage’ underscores the boundaryless, concrete, permanent, invisible and anonymous character of cyberbullying, which sometimes provides footprints and proof through which redressal and resolution are facilitated. The findings emphasize the significance of particular intervention strategies to address the special nature of traditional and cyber bullying at work.     

Indian call centres and business process outsourcing: a study in union formation

In this exploratory study of union formation in the Indian call centre/business process outsourcing sector, the authors draw upon evidence from the first detailed survey of members of the recently formed UNITES, and from extensive interviews. This paper engages with mobilisation theory and analyses of trade union formation.     

A simulation model for evaluating a set of emergency vehicle base locations: development, validation, and usage.

This paper describes our experiences in developing a simulation model for evaluating a set of emergency response vehicle base locations. The project was undertaken jointly by the University of Arizona and the Tucson Fire Department. The issues of model development, data collection, model validation, and experimentation are discussed. The critical nature of the problem and the clients' lack of experience with mathematical models, made model validation the major step in gaining user acceptance. We show that looking solely at standard performance statistics such as the calls successfully serviced, may lead to the acceptance of an invalid model. We also show that the high level of detail used in many simulation models for evaluating base locations is unnecessary in the current case. An analysis evaluating two alternative sets of locations for the Tucson system is discussed.     

Trade intensity and business cycle synchronization: Are developing countries any different?

Trade intensity increases the business cycle co-movement among industrial countries. Using annual information for 147 countries for the period 1960-99 we find that the impact of trade intensity on business cycle correlation among developing countries is positive and significant, but substantially smaller than that among industrial countries. Our findings suggest that differences in the responsiveness of cycle synchronization to trade integration between industrial and developing countries are explained by differences in the patterns of specialization and bilateral trade.