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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the quandary that a taxpayer may be in when choosing between disclosing a tax return position that may be contrary to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) authorities and potentially subjecting the taxpayer to substantial penalties if the position is not disclosed.

The paper describes the technical rules applicable to tax return disclosures and IRS forms and provides several examples relating to hedge funds.

The tensions between disclosure, possibly triggering an IRS audit, and nondisclosure, possibly resulting in substantial penalties, are not easily resolvable. In addition, financial accounting reporting of uncertain tax positions (FIN 48) must also be considered in weighing the alternatives.

The paper provides timely guidance from experts on tax issues relating to tax return presentation in general, and to tax issues of hedge funds in particular.

This study examines how Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), as tax practitioners, interpret and apply the ethical tax standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), using a hypothetical situation. Although the authors attempt to determine if CPAs are more likely to apply the substantial authority standard given certain factors affecting both the CPAs and their tax clients, one-dimensional standard threshold applications leave us to interpret only whether these factors affect the CPAs’ decision to sign a tax return upholding an ambiguous position. The authors find that an aggressive CPA (self-reported) is more inclined to sign the return than an unaggressive CPA. The authors also find that favorable prior dealings with the IRS, and awareness that the IRS is not pursuing a contrary position to a certain tax position, both contribute significantly to the CPA’s willingness to sign the return. While an aggressive tax client also fosters willingness to sign, it appears that tax clients with a refund pending (as opposed to a payment pending) are more apt to trigger a signed return. Study results indicate that ambiguities in the tax code, in concert with mitigating CPA/client factors, may lead to significant discrepancies in interpretation and application.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how local and central authorities choose between lowest price and more complex scoring rules when they design supplier-selection mechanisms for public procurements. Five hypotheses are tested: a high level of cost uncertainty and highly non-verifiable quality makes the use of the lowest-price supplier-selection method less likely. Organizational habits and transaction-cost considerations influence the choice of mechanism. Strong quality concerns make complex rules more likely.

The analysis departures from normative theory (rational choice) and is based on the regression analysis and survey data comprising a gross sample of 40 contracting authorities and detailed information about 651 procurements.

More complex scoring rules are used more often when the authority is uncertain about costs and about delivered quality. Authority effects are also found to directly and indirectly influence the choice of supplier-selection method, suggesting that tendering design is partly driven by local habits and institutional inertia.

The authors argue that, from a normative point of view, lowest price is an adequate method when the degree of uncertainty is low, for example, because the procured products are standardized and since quality can be verified. When there is significant cost uncertainty, it is better to use the so-called economically most advantageous tender (EMAT) method. (Preferably this should be done by assigning monetary values to different quality levels.) If there is significant uncertainty concerning delivered quality, the contracting authority should retain a degree of discretion, so as to be able to reward good-quality performance in observable but non-verifiable quality dimensions; options to extend the contract and subjective assessments of quality are two possibilities. The main findings are that EMAT and more complex scoring rules are used more often when the contracting authorities report that they experience substantial uncertainty concerning delivered quality and actual costs and that these factors tend to decrease the weight given to price, in line with the predictions. However, the authors also find that this result is mainly driven by variations between authorities, rather than by between-products variation for the same authority. This is from a training of professionals and regulation perspective of policy relevance.

Contract allocation based on habits rather than rational ground could implicate the waste of resources (tax payers money) as it adventures the matching of the preferences of the public sector (the objective, subject matter, of the procurement) and what the potential supplier offers in its tender.

Although the principles for supplier selection are regulated by law they give the contracting authority substantial freedom in designing the scoring rule and in choosing what quality criteria to use. The tension between different objectives and the more general question whether the choices made by authorities reflect rational decision making or institutional inertia together motivate the current study. While the design of the supplier-selection mechanism is an important consideration in procurement practice, it has attracted relatively little attention from the academic community.

Describes a study which examined expectations for academic leadership of, and sharing of authority by, departmental heads in a community college, a technical institute, and a university in Alberta, Canada. Information was obtained from questionnaires completed by 20 deans, 123 incumbent department heads, and 17 faculty association executive members; and also from interviews with 17 department heads and three senior administrators. Several substantial differences were noted in the information provided by respondents classified by position and type of institution.

Recent reforms to higher education systems in many OECD countries have focused on making universities more effective organisations in competing for resources and reputations. This has often involved increasing their internal cohesion and external autonomy from the state to make them more similar to private companies. However, pre-reform universities differed so greatly in their governance and capabilities that the impact of institutional changes has varied considerably between three ideal types: Hollow, State-chartered, and Autarkic. Furthermore, the combination of: (a) the inherent uncertainty of scientific research undertaken for publication, (b) limited managerial control over work processes and reputations, and (c) the contradictory effects of some funding and governance changes has greatly restricted the ability of universities to function as authoritatively integrated organisations capable of developing distinctive competitive competences.

Alternative courses which present themselves when a new university is being planned are to replicate a traditional model, or to explore new ways of promoting scholarship, drawing on the experience of existing universities and their staffs and students, and on perceptions of external needs and pressures for various sorts of learning. The latter course was followed by Griffith University, Brisbane, which opened in 1975. The decision to organize academic activities in non‐departmental schools, each with a unifying theme or problem set orientation, in combination with concern at the cumbersome decision making processes of more traditional forms, led to the design of a relatively decentralized policy making and executive structure: a Council, supported by a range of policy making and advisory committees each with explicit responsibilities and authorities; a limit number of academic and other operating divisions, each headed by an executive officer with substantial delegated authority; and a structure for an emphasis on horizontal interaction.

In Scotland residential units for children remain largely in the hands of local authorities. A reluctance to plan for and use such services as a positive choice results in many children being placed as a last resort. Two research studies gathered data over a six‐month period and considered seven local authorities' admissions to children's units, allowing for in‐depth exploration of the manner in which children are being placed in residential care. The studies revealed a significant number of children aged under 12 being admitted to residential care, many placements of a very short duration, poor evidence of placement planning, substantial numbers of sibling groups being separated and admitted to different residential care settings and many instances of residential placements being used when not the preferred option. The implications of the findings are discussed and possible solutions offered as to how the residential sector can be developed to achieve the wide range of roles it is currently expected to fulfil.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the impact of the incentives of competition authorities concerning antitrust enforcement on the structure of enforcement and understanding of the substantive norms and welfare standards in Russia using case-level evidence.

The study is based on a unique data set of appeals to infringement decisions in 2008-2012. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are applied to derive an understanding of the targets of competition policy in the practice of enforcement.

The analysis reveals that the majority of cases would never be investigated under conventional understanding of the goals of antitrust enforcement. It is also shown that antitrust authorities tend to investigate cases that require less input but result in infringement decisions with lower probability of being annulled and lower cost to proceed. Structure of enforcement is skewed toward cases where harm serves as independent and sufficient evidence of competition law violation.

The results show that it is dangerous to motivate authority and public servants based either on number of tasks completed or completeness of tasks when they are heterogeneous in terms of difficulty and where easier ones provide lower positive effects on welfare. Judicial reviews may poorly contribute to performance measurement under a discretionary choice of enforcement targets.