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Using a meta-regression analysis, we quantitatively review the empirical literature on the relation between effective tax rate (ETR) and firm size. Accounting literature offers two competing theories on this relation: The political cost theory, suggesting a positive size-ETR relation, and the political power theory, suggesting a negative size-ETR relation. Using a unique data set of 56 studies that do not show a clear tendency towards either of the two theories, we contribute to the discussion on the size-ETR relation in three ways: First, applying meta-regression analysis on a US meta-data set, we provide evidence supporting the political cost theory. Second, our analysis reveals factors that are possible sources of variation and bias in previous empirical studies; these findings can improve future empirical and analytical models. Third, we extend our analysis to a cross-country meta-data set; this extension enables us to investigate explanations for the two competing theories in more detail. We find that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, a transparency index and a corruption index explain variation in the size-ETR relation. Independent of the two theories, we also find that tax planning aspects potentially affect the size-ETR relation. To our knowledge, these explanations have not yet been investigated in our research context.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This article examines relationships between capitalism and democracy as perceived by contending perspectives within the liberal capitalist‐liberal democratic tradition(s). Bentham and the Mills are taken as initiating both this tradition and the core elements of the debate within it. Pre‐Benthamite theories are first reviewed. Then, after discussion of Bentham and James Mill and of John Stuart Mill, Mill's late nineteenth and early twentieth century successors are examined. We then go on to consider hypotheses concerning the “exceptional” quality of relationships between capitalism and democracy in the United States. The penultimate section of the article adumbrates the main contours of mid‐twentieth century pluralist‐elitist theories. We conclude with a summary.

It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.

Western economics came into being with the rise of the capitalist market economy. It had a nature of duality beginning from its birth: the justificativeness of providing theoretical pillars for the capitalist market economy system and the scientificity of revealing the internal relations and operating rules of the capitalist market economy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

However, after the 1830s, this justificativeness gradually evolved into vulgarity. Since the 1930s, modern western mainstream economics has mainly explored the general market economy on the assumption that the capitalist system remains unchanged, and many outcomes of such research are positive and beneficial.

Political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, at the present stage, is mainly a Chinese socialist market economics. It is guided by the Marxist political economy and rooted in the great practice of China’s reform and opening up and socialist modernization.

According to political complexion, western economic theories can be divided into political economic theory, mainstream economic theory and basic economic theory. By subjecting these theories to what we term “elimination,” “transformation” and “transplantation” surgeries, respectively, we can absorb and accommodate their beneficial elements in building a political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which in turn is conducive to the development and prosperity of such an economy.

“Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of “good” and “evil” as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter… It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil.” Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West, 1975.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain the complex interrelationships which influence the performance of politically connected firms to create value for their providers of finance and other stakeholders. In doing so, it examines the interrelationships between efficiency and delivering on corporate performance of a firm with political ties.

The authors gathered the literature from the Scopus website. They reviewed the literature of 58 manuscripts about the efficiency and performance of politically connected firms.

The research finds that the better quality of efficiency of politically connected firms is positively related to the corporate performance of politically connected firms. The authors’ theoretical findings corroborate the political theory, agency theory, stakeholder theory, resource dependency theory and stewardship theory. These theories prove that political connections have an impact on firm performance as a politician reinforces the efficacy. To better understand the effect of political connections on solid performance due to efficiency, this study classifies various efficiencies and links them with political ties.

Several avenues of research are suggested to examine further the interrelationships identified.

The authors’ conceptual findings are valuable for institutional investors, policymakers and stakeholders. To sum up, all theoretical shreds of evidence prove that politically connected firms can enhance performance via efficiency.

The paper conceptualizes the efficiency and performance interrelationships of politically connected firms. The extant literature comparison allows an assessment of the extent to which different efficiency contexts lead to differences in performance.

This article employs a system analytic framework to categorize the available research literature on the politics of education in order to explain the inter‐relationship of private and public interests and of different levels in primary and secondary American schools. The objectives are several: to explain and develop the analytical framework of David Easton; to illustrate its heuristic utility by categorizing empirically‐based research within the components of that framework, and to suggest and encourage future research directions in the subject. Education has escaped application of traditional policy analysis in America because educators have convinced scholars and laymen that they are “non‐political,” a label which even most political scientists have accepted without challenge. However, during the 1960s, a few scholars in education and political science began to apply political analytical methods to public school conflict. This research has begun to change perceptions of education and to provide a beginning set of research projects whose data support tentative generalization about the policy‐making process and the total system of public schools. This orientation is bound to increase because of increasing national government intervention in local schools, both through integration and financial policies. These have provoked growing conflict locally over the proper direction of school policies. In this article, we see how such stress is transmitted in the form of “demands” and “supports” into the “political system”, that persistent social mechanism known in all societies in different forms provides an “authoritative allocation of values and resources”. The political system, in this case public school bodies, “converts” such “inputs” into “outputs” of public policy, which in their administration create outcomes which later cause a “feedback” into the political system as the material for new policy demands. For each component of this Eastonian system, this article examines relevant research, providing an extensive annotated bibliography. From this review, it is possible to suggest lines of needed research.

Here Marx's philosophy is dissected from the angle of bourgeois capitalism which he, Marx, sought to overcome. His social, political and economic ideas are criticised. Although it is noted that Marx wanted to ameliorate human suffering, the result turned out to be Utopian, contrary to his own intentions. Contrary to Marx, it is individualism that makes the best sense and capitalism that holds out the best hope for coping with most of the problems he sought to solve. Marx's philosophy is alluring but flawed at a very basic level, namely, where it denies the individuality of each person and treats humanity as “an organic body”. Capitalism, while by no means out to guarantee a perfect society, is the best setting for the realisation of the diverse but often equally noble human goals of its membership.