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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.

Numerous policies are established in Mauritius to attract foreign direct investment, but at the same time, severe concerns were raised concerning the erosion of Mauritian tax base, which is witnessed by the decrease in the percentage of tax revenue to gross domestic product in recent years. To avoid these issues, in 2019, the Mauritian legislator has domesticated the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) BEPS 2013 Action 3 on controlled foreign company (CFC) in its income tax legislation. As such, the purpose of this study is to critically assess the implications of CFC rules of Mauritius to reduce tax avoidance in the light of international tax competition.

To achieve the research objective, this study will adopt a black letter approach by analysing the rules and regulations of various jurisdiction as well as international standards on CFCs and other tax avoidance legal provisions. A comparative analysis will be conducted between Mauritian laws on CFCs and the corresponding legislation of the UK and the USA, which are selected to assess the developed world’s position on strict CFC rules.

A hasty implementation of CFC rules leads to various complexities like interpretation issues and diminishing the competitiveness of the country to multinationals. In this respect, there is the risk of a trade-off between tax collected and foreign direct investment in the country. Consequently, the research recommends that Mauritius reforms its CFC legislation by extending the scope of tax exemptions for intra-group financing income, for the first year of CFC’s operation with the possibility of offsetting foreign taxes and for the Mauritius Revenue Authority to establish detailed guidelines on the determination of CFC income and its attribution for tax purposes in Mauritius.

Existing literature has to a great extent focused on the role of CFC rules as a tax avoidance measure and on the divergence or convergence between domestic CFC legislation against the OECD recommendations (Dourado, 2015; Xu, 2018; Beebeejaun et al., 2023). However, limited literature is available on the evaluation of the purpose of CFC rules enacted by a developing country being Mauritius in the context of the global competitive market, to which this research aims at filling the gap.

The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.

First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.

This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.

This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.

This paper examines the short- and long-run effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on tax revenue in Ghana.

The paper adopts the autoregressive distributed lag approach to estimate FDI’s long-run and short-run effects on tax revenue. The study uses time-series data from 1983 to 2019 for Ghana, mainly obtained from The Bank of Ghana, the World Bank and the IMF.

The results show that, in the short-run, FDI has no significant effect on direct tax revenue and total tax revenue but significantly hurts indirect tax revenue. In the long run, however, the results show that FDI has significant positive effects on indirect tax revenue and total tax revenue but no significant effect on direct tax revenue.

Empirical studies often fail to analyse the short-run and long-run effects of FDI on tax revenue. This study contributes to the mixed literature by analysing the short-run and long-run effects of FDI on tax revenue in an emerging market context. Additionally, this study employs three tax revenue measures in analysing the nexus.

Independent directors (IDs) in India are required to qualify for the online proficiency self-assessment test to acquire or retain their position on the corporate boards. The purpose of this paper was to examine the perceived positive and negative aspects of the new mandate for the overall quality of corporate boards in India.

This study used a qualitative methodology and applied the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. Data was collected from board members using semi-structured interviews.

This study revealed the positive and negative perceived aspects of the mandatory policy prescription of proficiency test for IDs. It was found that the participants emphasized training and mentoring programs for the IDs.

Drawing upon the actual board experiences of the participants, this study has the potential to assist policymakers in making regulations that are more effective in enhancing the quality of corporate boards. The example of action taken as well as the criticism or positive aspects pointed out can generate interest in other legislators.

The concept of proficiency test for IDs is unique to India. A review of literature did not reveal the existence of any regulatory provisions for a mandatory uniform test for examining the proficiency of IDs, in any corporate law jurisdiction apart from India.

This study explores the causes of delayed mandatory annual report filings of private companies in Estonia.

The authors use an online survey targeting companies that had submitted annual reports for 2017 late (late-filers) or failed to submit these by July 2020 (non-filers). The responses of 492 late-filers and 122 non-filers are analysed with exploratory factor analysis, Mann–Whitney U-Test and logistic regression.

Annual report filing decisions of both, late-filers and non-filers, are strongly driven by administrative costs attached to the preparation and submission of reports with non-filers perceiving these to be significantly greater. The relevance of other disclosure-related costs and benefits remains similar for both late-filers and non-filers. While proprietary and privacy concerns remain rather unimportant, benefits of timely disclosure, in the form of access to financing and possibilities to continue ordinary business activities, remain important disclosure timing drivers.

Policy interventions should focus on preventive measures that hinder companies' ordinary business activities in case of non-compliance to reporting deadlines. Monetary sanctions can be used to strengthen the desired behaviour alongside broader clarification of the purpose of mandatory reporting and available exemptions.

The authors propose an empirically testable comprehensive one-period model of disclosure timing decisions of private companies differentiating late-filers and non-filers. The authors address the limitations of previous studies through a survey that allows the authors to draw direct inferences about the trade-offs between different decision drivers and the motivations behind managers' disclosure timing decisions.

Research on the significance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and value creation is nascent as compared to CSR and financial performance. The concept of value is also evolving because of changing business environments, globalization and the expanded idea of CSR. Nowadays, managers expect a more quick, pragmatic approach to satisfy valid stakeholder claims while simultaneously creating competitive advantage through reputation and investor value. The paper aims to examine the impact of CSR on the market and sustainable value creation through CSR expenditure in India and the moderating role of pressure-sensitive institutional investors (PSII).

The study used panel data regression methodology on a sample of 1,845 non-financial Indian firms from 2015 to 2021.

CSR creates market and sustainable value for non-financial Indian firms in line with stakeholder theory. The authors find a positive moderating role of governance represented by PSII on CSR and market value creation but not on sustainable value.

The study is based on secondary data. CSR, despite being a regulatory obligation, provided long-term benefits that increased their sustainable growth rate. The results highlight the importance given by financial markets to CSR activities. Other types of institutional investors can also be examined in future research. CSR can be embedded in the core operations of the firm, which can help in fostering a culture of sustainability and responsible business practices that benefit firms and society as a whole. Tax incentives can be provided to firms investing in CSR.

CSR provides long-term benefits to the firm, which enhances the goodwill and integrity of the firm in the market. The results reveal that besides capital market investors, firms are subject to the scrutiny of consumers, communities and the government as expectations rise and information spreads faster, which can have repercussions. CSR helps in meeting such expectations and the perceived value of the firms. Managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) can pay attention to the type of institutional investors like PSII, which can be formed as a part of the firm’s CSR strategy.

The positive impact of CSR on sustainable value expresses a long-term management orientation based on the improvement of stakeholder relations and the associated environmental impacts referring to cohesion and consensus, market opportunities and strengthened reputation and image. A sustainable company involves a conscious and continuing effort in the equilibrium between contrasting stakeholders’ expectations in an attempt to optimize value creation. Tax exemption can be provided for CSR activities.

The authors contribute to the scant literature on CSR and value creation, especially sustainable value, as most of the prior studies are not empirical on sustainable value in the Indian context. Managers and CEOs can pay attention to the types of institutional investors like PSII, which can be formed as a part of the firm’s strategy.

This investigation aims to determine the effect of trade uncertainty on domestic investment (DI) and foreign direct investment (FDI) for the Turkish economy from the first quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2020.

The authors adopt the vector autoregression (VAR) model augmented with Fourier terms. Using this methodology, the authors obtain the empirical results of the impulse-response functions and the variance decomposition analysis.

The empirical results demonstrate that a shock to trade uncertainty has a slight negative impact on DI for up to approximately 1.5 years, whereas its impact on FDI is negative but long-lasting. Moreover, the contribution of trade uncertainty to FDI is relatively higher than to DI in the error variance decomposition for the investigated period. These empirical results can be beneficial for shaping the Turkish authorities' trade policies in the following periods.

These findings have implications within the macroeconomic setting. Government authorities can provide tax exemptions for specified sectors and debureaucratize investment processes for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurs. Additionally, institutional quality and property rights should be protected strictly and developed gradually.

This study is the first to examine the impact of world trade uncertainty on Türkiye’s DI and FDI. Because trade uncertainty might act as fixed costs, this creates the option value of waiting and seeing the market, and firms hesitate to incur investment.