Explaining resistance to regulatory interventions to prevent obesity and improve nutrition: A case-study of a sugar-sweetened beverages tax in Australia

Globally, 43 jurisdictions have implemented a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) for obesity prevention; however, there is significant political resistance to adopting such a policy in Australia. This paper applies Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to the case study of an SSB tax in Australia to identify barriers and enablers to policy adoption, and to inform future advocacy strategies in local and international contexts. A systematic search was conducted of scholarly literature, parliamentary documents and media articles relating to an SSB tax. Information retrieved was analysed and integrated under the ‘problem’, ‘policy’ or ‘political’ streams of the MSF. The findings reveal that Australia is a substantial way from having the conditions in place where a tax might be successfully implemented due to industry influence, fragmented advocacy efforts, political opposition to paternalistic policies, conflicting political agendas, and inadequate pressure for change from civil society. Opening a policy window will require a shift in political ownership of the obesity problem, or the coupling of an SSB tax to an alternative problem. The public health community also needs to agree that an SSB tax deserves greater priority, relative to alternative policies for addressing obesity, and to agree on the most effective tax design.     

股票期权的个人所得税问题探讨

股票期权制度是一种新型的薪酬激励制度。股票期权制度作为富有成效的激励制度之一，在发达国家得到了广泛的应用，已成为市场经济国家和地区的企业对员工进行长期激励的非常普遍的方式。近两年来，股票期权成为我国企业改革和发展的一个热门话题，并在部分企业开始实施。如何针对股票期权所得的特点，并借鉴国外经验，制定相应的税收政策，是我们迫切需要解决的问题。本对我国股票期权所得税目、纳税义务发生时间、计税依据、税收优惠及税收征管等作了较为详细的探讨。     

Pricing practices and firms' market power in international cellular markets, an empirical study

Previous studies on international marketing have typically asked the question: “how is the demand characterized across countries?” Such analysis is then used to provide guidelines for firms to enter new markets and/or to allocate marketing resources across countries. To provide such normative guidelines, however, one also needs to analyze the supply-side of the problem, i.e., ask: “what is the likely market power that firms will be able to command in different countries?” Building on the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) framework, recent research in marketing provides marketers with a variety of models to explore competitive interactions among firms in the context of a single market. The goal of this paper is to extend this literature to a multimarket/multinational context to help international marketers assess the likely market power they face when entering new countries. We illustrate the proposed method on the mobile telecommunications industry, using price and quantity data from 10 countries around the world, estimating firms' market power as a function of a number of country characteristics.The results indicate that, while the simple presence of competition diminishes firms' market power, it does not lead to perfect competition. Interestingly, a higher number of competitors in a country does not seem to have significant incremental effect on market power. In contrast, the country's commitment to a severe antitrust policy has a significant negative effect, while the monopolist's lead-time before competition is allowed has a significant positive effect on market power. These findings, together with a change in price elasticities as a result of competition, suggest that market power in different countries may originate from two sources: (i) collusive pricing among cellular operators and (ii) consumers' switching costs across service providers. For international marketers, the findings imply that the attractiveness of wealthier countries (with usually faster diffusion rates and larger market potential) may be mitigated by higher levels of competition (as a result of developed antitrust regulation and more consumer exposure to competitive marketing practices). From a policy point of view, it suggests that (in contrast to the conventional wisdom) simple deregulation may not be enough to reduce prices to competitive levels. In addition, a severe antitrust policy is crucial to achieve this goal.     

The Impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure on Information Asymmetry and Trading: An Intraday Analysis

This study examines the impact of Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) on liquidity, information asymmetry, and institutional and retail investors trading behavior. Our main findings suggest three conclusions. First, Regulation FD has been effective in improving liquidity and in decreasing the level of information asymmetry. Second, retail trading activity increases dramatically after earnings announcements but there is a significant decline in institutional trading surrounding earnings announcements, particularly in the pre‐announcement period. Last, the decline in information asymmetry around earnings announcements is closely associated with a lower participation rate in the pre‐announcement period and more active trading of retail investors after earnings releases.     

Network neutrality and the nature of competition between network operators

The neutral architecture of the Internet is being challenged by various parties, such as network operators providing the connections to end-users, who are interested in gaining control of the information exchanged over the Internet. What are the effects on competition and welfare of such practices? Currently, there exists very little economic theory on network neutrality. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the type of economic modeling that can address network neutrality, as well as of the type of results that can be expected.     

金融监管法的价值:自由竞争与金融安全

分析美国金融法的历史可以看到,金融监管法的核心价值由完全的自由竞争变为单一的金融安全,再转向有安全保障的自由竞争;分析金融法律规范也可以证实,现行的金融监管目标与各种监管措施都体现自由竞争与金融安全的价值追求.过分追求金融安全的价值观是非常局限的,它只能适用于金融不安全的状况;现在的金融效率观不是金融监管法的价值观.自由竞争与金融安全是对立统一的关系,两者的地位随着金融运行态势的变化而逐步变化.     

Regulating an externality-generating public utility: A multi-dimensional screening approach

In this paper, I present a monopoly screening model in which a firm holds private information on fixed abatement costs. Because of the nature of the optimal contracts, bunching is never optimal even with ‘n’ distinct types. A characterization of full and limited information solutions is offered and it is shown that the design standards alone determine the value of an information rent. The variable charge is completely free of any marginal information costs. This allows the variable charge to track marginal damages and thereby ensures that marginal social costs are covered. A fixed charge implements the optimal solution.     

Deregulating Network Industries: Dealing with Price-quality Tradeoffs

This paper examines the effects of introducing competition into monopolized network industries on prices and infrastructure quality. Analyzing a model with reduced-form demand, we first show that deregulating an integrated monopoly cannot simultaneously decrease the retail price and increase infrastructure quality. Second, we derive conditions under which reducing both retail price and infrastructure quality relative to the integrated monopoly outcome increases welfare. Third, we argue that restructuring and setting very low access charges may yield welfare losses, as infrastructure investment is undermined. We provide an extensive analysis of the linear demand model and discuss policy implications.     

市场准入规制与资源的优化配置

本文讨论了政府通过市场准入规制来调节市场结构,优化市场主体资源配置的问题。提出通过选择适当的门槛,政府可以促使企业更加理性地进行市场进入决策,保持市场适度的竞争,提高社会资源的综合利用效率。     

Pricing access in network competition

We compare various access pricing rules in the two-way access model. We show that the Generalized Efficient Component Pricing Rule (TECPR) leads to a lower equilibrium price than does the Efficient Component Pricing Rule, (ECPR) marginal cost pricing, (MCP) and any non-negative fixed access charges.