Search results

Acknowledging that housing forms a large part of households’ and country’s long-term wealth, the South African Government has implemented various housing-related policies towards that end. Among these, the government has extended transfer duty exemption to house buyers – both individuals or natural persons and companies or other parties – to enable them buy houses of their choices since January 1950 to date. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between historical transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) over a longer period, where a comprehensive data set on house sales and other predictors was available.

This paper uses multi-year data on repeat house sales from 2010 to 2020 and other macro- and socio-economic variables to test the relationship between transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the CoJ, a core part of Gauteng province, South Africa. After cleaning the original data, final analysis was based on 139,121 repeat sales transactions. Data was analyzed in R.

Findings suggest that, when macro-, socio-economic and yearly effects are controlled, transfer duty has a damping effect on housing demand in the CoJ. The results were consistent across all the estimated models. While the motivation behind the implementation of transfer duty exemption in South Africa continues to encourage home ownership, these findings are unexpected because they do not offer support to that policy intention. These unexpected results are partly explained by the prevailing complexities of the housing market and related policies and the progressive tax regime. However, there are welfare effects that all buyers achieve across the housing market ecosystem.

This paper extends work on housing markets research in South Africa through the investigation of mortgage-based housing market in the CoJ that presents one of the densest, developed, bustling and growing housing market in the country. It also presents a fertile ground where all the effects of all the housing policies coalesce – in the statistical sense, one can control the effect of some aspects of housing policies, while appropriately testing the link between a specific policy (in this case, transfer duty exemption) and housing dynamics.

The paper traces the development of employee ownership in the UK since the 1980s. It proposes that employee ownership is a function of macro-level contexts and micro-level decisions, with the latter framed and guided by the former. The macro context comprises the regulatory framework and the provision of incentives to adopt employee ownership. The paper shows how the evolution of these has led to a steep increase in employee ownership in the last eight years.

The paper draws on several sources of empirical data to chart the development of employee ownership in the UK since the 1980s and to identify the current features of employee ownership. Two firm-level surveys conducted in 2015 and 2020/21 are supplemented by qualitative case study data collected in the early 1990s. An annual census of all employee-owned firms facilitates a comprehensive overview of the current state of UK employee ownership.

It is found that there has been a steep increase in the number of UK employee-owned firms since 2014 after several decades of uneven growth. This is attributed to the introduction of new incentives and to refinements of the regulatory framework. Over the period, there has been a shift from hybrid employee ownership, combining direct and indirect forms, to indirect ownership associated with the employee ownership trust model.

The paper provides an original history of employee ownership in the UK using rich and unique data, along with the most comprehensive picture of current employee ownership to date.

This paper aims to analyse the stabilizing macroeconomic effects of economic policies during the COVID-19 crisis in Spain.

The contribution of the structural shocks that explain the behaviour of the main macroeconomic aggregates during 2020 are estimated, and the effects of economic policies are simulated using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model estimated for the Spanish economy.

The results highlight the importance of supply and demand shocks in explaining the COVID-19 crisis. The annual fall in gross domestic product (GDP) moderates at least by 7.6 points in the most intense period of the crisis, thanks to these stabilizing policies. Finally, the potential effects of Next Generation EU in the Spanish economy are estimated. Assuming that Spain may receive from the EU between 1.5 and 2.25 percentage points (pp) of GDP, activity could increase to between 2 and 3 pp in 2024.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the exercises and findings are original. All these results show the usefulness of a DSGE model, such as the estimated rational expectation model for Spain, as a practical tool for the applied economic analysis, the macroeconomic assessment of economic policies and the understanding of the Spanish economy.

The present paper aims to evaluate the structural impact of exogenously induced fiscal shocks on the Moroccan economy. This entails an analysis of the effect on the GDP of COVID-19-induced fiscal shocks manifesting in terms of budgetary revenues and expenditures. A key aspect of this analysis addresses the size of the tax and fiscal multipliers.

The study examines the structural relationship between five variables during the period between Q1 2009 and Q2 2020 using an SVAR approach that allows for a dynamic interaction between ordinary expenditures and revenues on a quarterly basis.

Positive structural shocks on public spending are likely to negatively impact economic growth. Negative economic growth, in turn, will damage price levels and interest rates, mainly over the long term. However, public-revenue-multiplier-associated shocks exceed these price- and interest-rate multiplier-associated shocks. Indeed, a structural shock to ordinary revenues can have a positive but insignificant impact on the GDP stemming from the ensuing decrease in the government budget deficit that proceeds from the increase in government revenues.

This is one of the first studies in the Moroccan context to assess the impact of the current worldwide pandemic on public finances. In addition, this study highlights the importance of boosting economic recovery through public spending.

This paper aims to evaluate the root causes of stagnation of the Islamic banking sector in Turkey in three steps and proposes solutions and policy recommendations.

First, global Islamic banking practices in terms of governance and instruments are summarised and compared with the Turkish experience. Second, the financial and efficiency ratios of Turkish Islamic banks (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs) are compared and analysed for the period 2005 to 2015. Finally, the long-term growth strategy of Turkish IBs is evaluated.

This paper asserts that Islamic banking in Turkey diverges from Islamic banking practices of prominent countries by not having a Sharīʿah governance framework at either a national or bank level. Turkey is thus immediately in need of a sound Sharīʿah governance framework. Increasing the variety of instruments and improving the perception of Islamic banking in the society are other critical points. Furthermore, regulatory and research institutions specifically focusing on Islamic banking are insufficient. A large number of financial and efficiency ratios reveal that the efficiency and profitability of IBs fall behind that of CBs. IBs should improve their business models, operational efficiencies and information technology infrastructure as these issues are undervalued in their growth strategy.

This study sheds light on the Turkish Islamic banking sector, which is a rarely studied topic. It is the first study that provides institutional differences of banking practices and evaluates the efficiency status and growth strategy of IBs in Turkey.

The purpose of this paper is to study the concept of tax gap, that is the difference between the total amount of taxes collected and the total tax revenues that would be collected under full tax compliance.

The authors also present the methodology to estimate the gap for two taxes levied on wealth: the wealth tax and the inheritance and gift tax; both are administered in Spain by the regional tax authorities.

The authors point out that its estimation offers useful information about the relative size and nature of non-compliance, as well as its evolution over time. Likewise, the tax gap is a valuable instrument not only to define enforcement strategies of the tax administration but also to enhance its accountability. Nonetheless, the methodology used to estimate the tax gap and, consequently, the interpretation of the results is subject to limitations that are discussed in the paper.

Finally, the paper provides the results of the estimations obtained from using microdata: 44.34 per cent gap in the wealth tax and 41.26 per cent in the inheritance and gift tax.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of financial derivatives usage and country’s tax environment characteristics on the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance.

This study uses a cross-country analysis with the scope of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries which consists of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The level of financial derivatives usage positively affects the level of tax avoidance. This finding indicates that financial derivatives can be used as tax avoidance tool. Furthermore, the positive effect of the level of financial derivatives usage on the level of tax avoidance is lower in countries with a competitive tax environment than in countries with an uncompetitive tax environment. This finding indicates that in country with a competitive tax environment, the use of financial derivatives as a tax avoidance tool can be replaced by the tax facilities provided by that country.

This study uses four countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region and does not test the sample based on the financial derivative types.

Tax authorities need to establish a clear tax regulation in regard to the tax treatment of financial derivatives transactions, e.g. define the definition of financial derivatives for hedging purposes and financial derivatives for speculative purposes; and define specific criteria to separate financial derivatives for hedging purposes from financial derivatives for speculative purposes. It is necessary to determine whether losses arising from derivative transactions are classified as deductible expenses or non-deductible expenses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first that provide empirical evidence that the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance activities depends on a country’s tax environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between auditor characteristics and the level of tax avoidance in an emerging market.

In this regard, the effect of various factors such as auditor tenure, auditor industry specialization, audit reports and audit fees on tax avoidance was examined. The study sample includes listed companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange. The time period of study is six years from 2011 to 2016. Also in this study, firm size, leverage, firm age and auditor size were controlled.

The results of this research were determined in four hypotheses. First and second hypotheses that explore the relationship between auditor tenure and auditor industry specialization with tax avoidance were not confirmed. But the results showed a significant relationship between the type of audit opinions and audit fees with tax avoidance.

The current study investigates the auditor characteristics on tax avoidance in a developing nation of Iran and the results may helpful the developing countries.

Despite the worldwide stagnation in FDI, interest in Mongolia on the part of foreign investors, especially those from East Asia, North America, has grown over the last few years, mainly in the mining, trade and service sectors. The increase of FDI into Mongolia can be linked with the Mongolian government’s efforts to establish a more favorable external and internal legal environment in order to provide a free and open regime for business, the shifting tendency of world market center from traditional Europe, America to Asia, namely to China, resolving the “big debt” issue between Mongolia and Russian Federation which open new favorable opportunities for intensification of foreign investment inflows, increased domestic private savings and lastly Mongolia’s GDP steady growth rate during last years. The purpose of this paper is to review FDI inflows into Mongolia, detailing the sectors benefiting from this investment and the countries where it originates, based on information gathered in the period up to 2005.