Search results

Population aging in many countries has become a fundamental concern of public policy. One reason is fears that increasing numbers of elderly will place disproportionate burdens on their children in order to fund public pensions and health-related services. This analysis first discusses basic principles for assessing this question of intergenerational fairness. It then applies an empirically-based overlapping cohort dynamic microsimulation model for a quantitative analysis of the flows of taxes and cash and in-kind transfers for successive birth cohorts. The simulations cover both exogenous factors – specifically trends in life expectancy and the strength of the economy, and policy-related factors – specifically raising the age of entitlement to public pensions from age 65 to 70, and price versus relative wage indexing. The analysis concludes, among other points, that intergenerational differences are significantly smaller than intra-generational variations, and that the parents of the baby-boom generation are likely to benefit from the largest lifetime net transfers of any birth cohort from 1890 to 2010.

The distributional impacts of replacing an income tax that has graduated marginal rates by a flat tax are complex. Typically the flat tax rate will be less than the top marginal rate under the pre-existing tax, leading to gains for the wealthiest. On the other hand, real-world proposals generally combine this with increases in personal exemptions that benefit some of the lowest income taxpayers. The result is that flat tax proposals usually redistribute from the middle to the extremes.

Consumption taxes are an integral part of government revenue in countries around the world and are often subject to consumer evasion. The rapid rise of electronic commerce has exacerbated this problem as cross-border selling over the internet has enabled foreign businesses to sell and avoid collection and remittance of tax on their sales.

In this paper, we search for the solution to this problem through the analysis of three tax collection models: vendor, financial institution, and internet service provider (ISP). In addition, we examine administrative tools that enable more effective collection as well as inducements for taxpayers or collection agents to carry out their responsibility.

We conclude that the ISP collection model is not feasible at this time. On the other hand, we find that the vendor model, when supplemented with appropriate administrative tools and inducements, and the financial institution model, both represent viable options for policymakers to consider.

In recent years, sustainability considerations in the real estate sector have moved from being a niche market phenomenon to a mainstream trend. The movement has been accompanied by a shift in the industry’s perception of sustainable buildings. Traditional cost-saving goals are now complemented by a growing interest in the potential for sustainable buildings to tackle broader economic and social sustainability challenges as well as issues related to health and well-being. The real estate industry is increasingly expected to adapt its strategies to incorporate new and more stringent environmental and urban development requirements, to cater to shifting demographics, and to utilize new advancements in construction processes and materials. This chapter explores recent research on sustainable real estate and highlights some of the newest trends in the market. The chapter then examines how policy and technological advancements can enable real estate developers to tackle environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. This will be exemplified through a focus on carbon taxation and timber construction. Based on these case studies, the chapter illustrates how today’s sustainable real estate sector – marked by its move beyond a focus on cost savings – requires for building practices to be strongly rooted in global, sustainable development policies.

The authors explore how entrepreneurs with limited resources legitimated (or failed to legitimate) a new organizational category in different jurisdictions in Canada despite severe resistance. The authors identify three meso-level domains of institutional action (public, administrative, and legal), where actors intervene to change their macro-institutional environment. The findings suggest that these domains mediate the relationship between micro-level agency and macro-level institutions. The authors describe how macro-level consensus about the category legitimacy emerges through a competition between judgments embedded in different discourses and how a particular discourse attains validity, forcing other actors to change their initial unfavorable legitimacy judgments and recognize the category’s legitimacy.

Despite declining in 2001, foreign direct investment (FDI) surged during the 1990s. As a result, current levels of FDI flows are triple their 1990 levels. It is well documented in the literature that FDI occurs in large part among countries that are geographically close. It is also well established that the NAFTA had a significant impact on both U.S. FDI flows and hence FDI stocks. In addition, tax policies and tax treaties have been shown to be important drivers of U.S. FDI. The analysis presented in this chapter confirms these earlier results. We extend the analysis, however, to show that tax treaties have a significant impact on financing patterns of U.S. MNE activities abroad. Based on these results, we argue that bilateral tax treaties should be an important part of trade agreements between the United States and Latin American partners in anticipation of a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).

This paper considers efficient venture capital investment duration for different types of entrepreneurial firms so that on exit information asymmetries between the venture capitalist (as seller) and the new owners of the investment are minimized, and capital gains maximized. We hypothesize that a number of factors are likely to affect investment duration, and our empirical tests confirm the statistical significance of some of these variables (stage of firm at first investment, capital available to the venture capital industry, whether the exit was preplanned, and whether the exit was made in response to an unsolicited offer). However, the fit between our theoretical model and the data is stronger in the United States than in Canada, offering evidence in support of the view that institutional factors have distorted investment duration in Canada.

This paper examines the corporate income tax compliance costs and their determinants by analyzing survey and financial statements data from firms operating in Greece. We find that corporate tax compliance costs are of considerable size and vary with several firm-specific characteristics, including the firm’s size, its age, the sector in which it operates, its location, and its legal form. The paper intends to raise awareness regarding the impact of tax compliance costs, especially for countries, such as Greece, that were significantly affected by the economic and financial crisis.