cash transfer programs with income multipliers procampo in mexico abstract cash transfer programs create multiplier effects when recipients put the money they receive to work to generate further incomes when this is the case the ultimate income effects are multiples of the amounts transferred we analyze the procampo program in mexico that was introduced to compensate farmers for the anticipated negative effect of nafta on the prices of basic crops the transfer rules and the timing of the panel data collected allow unique control of biases in this impact analysis we find that the multiplier among ejido sector recipients is in the range 1 5 2 6 multipliers are higher for households with medium and large farms low numbers of adults in the household nonindigenous backgrounds and located in the center and gulf regions high multipliers reflect income opportunities that had remained unrealized due to liquidity constraints that are relaxed by the transfers opportunities come from the asset endowments that these households received through the land reform particularly irrigated land and they are enhanced by access to technical assistance

getting credit to high return microentrepreneurs the results of an information intervention small scale entrepreneurs typically cite access to finance as the most important constraint to growth recent randomized experiments have shown the return to capital to be very high for the average microenterprise in sri lanka an intervention was designed to improve access to credit among these high return microenterprises without subsidizing interest rates or requiring group lending the intervention consisted of information sessions providing details of the microfinance loan product offered by a regional development bank and a reduction from two to one in the number of personal guarantors required for these loans ten percent of the microenterprises invited to the information meetings received a new loan doubling the proportion of firms receiving loans over this period however the loans do not appear to be going to particularly high return firms but rather to firms with more household assets many more firms will like loans but are constrained by an inability to find personal guarantors and by other bureaucratic procedures the results suggest that information alone is unlikely to be enough for most firms and point to the need for credit bureaus that cover microfinance loans and for continuing innovation in loan products that can reach the urban microenterprise sector

the perceived returns to education and the demand for schooling economists emphasize the link between market returns to education and investments in schooling though many studies estimate these returns with earnings data it is the perceived returns that affect schooling decisions and these perceptions may be inaccurate using survey data for eighth grade boys in the dominican republic we find that the perceived returns to secondary school are extremely low despite high measured returns students at randomly selected schools given information on the higher measured returns completed on average 0 20 0 35 more years of school over the next four years than those who were not

the impact of natural disaster on energy consumption international evidence abstract this research shows that natural disasters may hurt energy consumption by using data on 123 countries over the period 1990 2015 and classifying them according to their economic development level and region based on world development indicators we employ a two step system gmm method to examine the effect of natural disasters on energy consumption presenting findings that support our hypotheses in the models and show a strong negative effect for low income countries or those in the africa region after considering an alternative proxy for natural disaster we implement quantile regression methods their results find that natural disasters exhibit a negative and significant impact on oil renewable and nuclear energy consumptions the quantile regression models used in the robustness check present that the effects are stronger for low level energy consumption economies

from theory to practice canadian economists contributions to public finance we survey canadian economists contributions to the field of public finance from the mid 1980s to 2016 we highlight the development and extension of the models and tools of public economics and the empirical studies that have deepened our understanding of the efficiency and distributional issues over a wide range of public finance issues we also highlight contributions to the development of policies through commissioned reports and the important role that canadian institutions the canadian tax foundation the think tanks and the federal and provincial departments of finance have played in shaping tax and fiscal policies de la theorie a la pratique contributions des economistes canadiens a la finance publique on examine les contributions des economistes canadiens au domaine de la finance publique du milieu des annees 1980 a 2016 on souligne le developpement et l extension des modeles et des outils d economie publique et les etudes empiriques qui ont aide a approfondir notre comprehension des enjeux d efficacite et de distribution dans un vaste eventail de questions de finance publique on souligne aussi les contributions des rapports commandites au developpement de politiques publiques ainsi que le role important d institutions canadiennes l association canadienne d etudes fiscales les groupes d experts ainsi que les ministeres des finances du gouvernement federal et des gouvernements provinciaux dans le design des politiques fiscales

reducing child malnutrition how far does income growth take us how rapidly will child malnutrition respond to income growth this article explores that question using household survey data from 12 countries as well as data on malnutrition rates in a cross section of countries since the 1970s both forms of analysis yield similar results increases in income at the household and national levels imply similar rates of reduction in malnutrition using these estimates and better than historical income growth rates the article finds that the millennium development goal of halving the prevalence of underweight children by 2015 is unlikely to be met through income growth alone what is needed to accelerate reductions in malnutrition is a balanced strategy of income growth and investment in more direct interventions

taxes and the division of foreign operating income among royalties interest dividends and retained earnings abstract how do taxes influence the way u s corporations divide foreign affiliate operating income among royalties dividends interest and retained earnings the paper goes beyond previous work that focused largely on dividend repatriation behavior and provides a comprehensive analysis of the disposition of foreign subsidiary operating income the empirical results show that taxes have a large and statistically significant effect on the composition of payments own tax prices discourage the payment of dividends royalties and interest but dividend and other repatriation taxes do not increase retained earnings they only alter the composition of payments the results are therefore consistent with a generalized hartman sinn model of the mature controlled foreign corporation that has various alternative repatriation vehicles finally this paper integrates the choice of payments with income shifting among countries because the latter may be part of a low tax strategy for repatriations in this general framework conventional composite tax prices are not appropriate because the response to a change in a composite tax price depends on which components changed

how important is improving food availability for reducing child malnutrition in developing countries abstract do increases in the food supply per person in a country i e national food availability contribute substantially to reductions in malnutrition among its children this paper sets out to answer this controversial question using panel data from 63 developing countries over 1970 1996 this paper gives evidence in support of a statistically significant and strong positive impact of national food availability on child nutrition finding that increased food supplies have resulted in significant reductions in malnutrition since the 1970s despite population increases over the period however per capita food supplies have a declining marginal impact their effect is quite strong for countries with very low food availability e g most countries in sub saharan africa and south asia but weak or non existent for those with high levels e g most countries in the near east and north africa further non food factors such as women s education and status and the quality of health environments are also important determinants of children s nutritional status depending on the state of food availability in any particular geographic area and relative costs these factors may merit greater priority in policies to reduce malnutrition

the vanishing harberger triangle this paper shows that the double taxation of corporate dividends or profit repatriations implies a nucleus theory of the corporation after the firm is set up with a small stock of original capital it enters a phase of purely internal growth during which no dividends are paid and no shares are issued the phase terminates when an efficient stock of capital has been accumulated and dividends are paid during the growth phases the tax distortion is inversely related to the tax burden and it is larger than conventional formulae for the cost of internal and external equity finance suggest

on the taxation of multinational corporate investment when the deferral method is used by the capital exporting country abstract the user cost of capital for a subsidiary is derived when the capital exporter uses the deferral method for the taxation of the parent s foreign source income the hartman sinn result implying that the capital exporter s tax on remitted dividends is irrelevant to a subsidiary using retentions to finance investment is shown to be correct only when host and home countries have similar corporate income tax bases otherwise both the home and host country corporate tax provisions influence the cost of capital it is also shown that a cash flow tax by the capital importer is not neutral owing to interactions with the capital exporter s tax regime

does globalization affect growth evidence from a new index of globalization the study develops an index of globalization covering its three main dimensions economic integration social integration and political integration using panel data for 123 countries in 1970 2000 it is analysed empirically whether the overall index of globalization as well as sub indexes constructed to measure the single dimensions affect economic growth as the results show globalization indeed promotes growth the dimensions most robustly related with growth refer to actual economic flows and restrictions in developed countries although less robustly information flows also promote growth whereas political integration has no effect

tariffs and growth an empirical exploration of contingent relationships abstract a large body of empirical research indicates that countries with low policy induced trade barriers tend to enjoy rapid growth ceteris paribus in contrast alternative theoretical models suggest that the relationship between trade barriers and growth may be contingent on the level of development employing a direct trade barrier measure ad valorem tariff rates we find evidence of such a contingency the marginal effect of tariffs on growth is declining in the level of per capita income moreover evidence of a negative relationship between tariffs and growth is apparent only among the world s rich countries

capital income taxation in growing open economies abstract this paper studies how alternative capital mobility assumptions affect the incidence and efficiency of capital income taxation the study uses a two country intertemporal equilibrium model in which imperfectly elastic investment captures the notion of imperfectly mobile physical capital if home goods and foreign goods are perfect substitutes and investment is inelastic the tax effects in open and closed economies are similar only if physical capital is perfectly mobile are capital income taxes completely shifted in small open economies only then and if significant terms of trade effects are absent do open economy efficiency losses substantially exceed the closed economy losses

macroeconomic adjustment and the poor analytical issues and cross country evidence the author studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty first he summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world second he reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the poor third the author emphasizes the role of the labor market he develops an analytical framework that captures some of the main features of the urban labor market in developing countries and studies the effects of fiscal adjustment on wages employment and poverty fourth he presents cross country regressions linking various macroeconomic and structural variables to poverty the author finds that output growth and real exchange rate depreciations tend to lower poverty while illiteracy income inequality and macroeconomic volatility tend to increase poverty in addition the impact of growth on poverty appears to be asymmetric and to result from a significant relationship between episodes of increasing poverty and negative growth rates

the impact of the business environment on young firm financing this paper uses a dataset of more than 70 000 firms in over 100 countries to systematically study the use of different financing sources for new and young firms in comparison to mature firms the authors find that in all countries younger firms rely less on bank financing and more on informal financing however they also find that younger firms use more bank finance in countries with stronger rule of law and better credit information and that the reliance of young firms on informal finance decreases with the availability of credit information overall the results suggest that improvements to the legal environment and availability of credit information are disproportionately beneficial for promoting access to formal finance by young firms

the taxation of capital income in an open economy the importance of resident nonresident tax treatment abstract the authors develop a simulation model of the united states and the rest of the world to demonstrate how international capital mobility alters the incidence and capital formation incentives of taxes on capital income the model explicitly recognizes that u s and foreign investors hold a different mix of assets in each country only a modest degree of international mobility is necessary to substantially alter closed economy patterns of tax incidence differences in the tax treatment of residents and foreigners are particularly important in evaluating tax reductions at the individual level or the integration of corporate and individual income taxes

the taxing task of taxing transnationals financial and real investment flexibility tax competition and superior economic information by transnationals both create a rationale for corporate income taxation and limit the effectiveness of such taxation while these factors have led to a variety of transnational tax policies such as deferral double taxation apportionment and trade rules very few of these institutional features have been integrated into tax competition and agency models in this paper i show how the integration of investment flexibility tax competition and agency issues is crucial to our understanding of corporate tax policies

the incidence of interest withholding taxes evidence from the ldc loan market abstract during the 1970s developing countries differed widely in their regimes of source based interest withholding taxes this paper provides evidence on the relationship between interest rates paid by private ldc borrowers on international credits the withholding tax regime pre tax interest rates are estimated to increase significantly in withholding tax rates the extent of the mark up into higher pre tax interest rates reflects the offsetting foreign tax credits that banks expect to receive the expected tax credits represent the expected incidence of the non resident withholding taxes on creditor country treasuries estimated expected tax credits as reflected in bank interest rates vary with the year of loan origination they are relatively large for short term loans

the silver lining of red tape abstract an increasing number of international agreements require non discrimination from their participants i e the government of one country cannot treat foreign firms differently from domestic firms this is at odds with a government s desire to benefit its own citizens rather than foreign citizens i show that the use of red tape a wasteful application process can achieve de facto discrimination key to this result is firm heterogeneity since although the red tape cost is the same across firms only those sufficiently benefiting from an incentive program will find it worth the cost of applying if the benefits of targeting subsidies outweigh the burden of red tape red tape will be used

governance quality remittances and their implications for food and nutrition security in sub saharan africa abstract despite impressive progress in the fight against malnutrition and hunger in recent years food and nutrition insecurity remains a major concern in sub saharan africa ssa countries in this study we employ a panel data covering 15 ssa countries from 1996 to 2015 to investigate the growth effects of remittances and quality of governance on food and nutrition security proxied by the average value of food production and the average dietary energy supply adequacy respectively we use a dynamic empirical model based on system gmm to control for unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables the empirical results emanating from our analysis show that the interaction of remittances and the composite index of governance quality exerts positive and significant effects on the average value of food production and also contributes to the improvement of average dietary energy supply adequacy in ssa in addition the control of corruption government effectiveness political stability and rule of law scores increase both measures of food and nutrition security albeit the contribution of control over corruption score is relatively the largest as compared to other indicators of governance

the effects of price deregulation on maize marketing margins in south africa abstract there has been continuous controversy over the impact of food market reforms on food security in africa in south africa the government and media have often questioned the effects of price deregulation of maize meal the major staple food on consumers this article determines the effect of retail price deregulation on the size of maize milling retail margins in south africa regression models of monthly milling retail margins are run from the period may 1976 to december 2004 to assess the robustness of our findings we estimate several different models of structural change vary the sample period to examine the sensitivity of findings to unusual weather and market conditions in the region during episodes between 2001 and 2004 and run the models using different estimation techniques ols with newey west robust estimators and feasible general least squares in virtually all models the results indicate that real maize milling retailing margins in south africa have increased by at least 20 since the deregulation of retail prices in 1991 moreover there is evidence of trend growth in the size of the milling margin over time simulations indicate that the deregulation of maize meal prices has entailed a transfer of at least us 179 million year from consumers to agents in the marketing system further study is needed to understand why this outcome in south africa differs from findings in other countries in the region concerning the effects of reform on food marketing margins

trade liberalization and food security in nepal among south asian countries nepal liberalized most extensively during the 1980s and 1990s on both domestic and external fronts in south asia nepal has the lowest per capita income highest dependence of population on agriculture and second highest poverty rate at the same time nepal has the lowest average tariffs in south asia and has taken several steps to downsize its public food distribution system and remove a host of agricultural subsidies the outcomes from these policy reforms in nepal are mixed aggregate indicators of food sufficiency and security per capita food availability extent of malnourishment show improvement in nepal since liberalization relative to other south asian countries nepal is doing better on some indicators like extent of undernourished population while on other indicators like stunting of children nepal is actually doing the worst more importantly the gains from liberalization across regions in nepal have been uneven the reason for such an uneven outcome is lack of complementary policies from the government that would lead to spatial integration of markets e g the creation of physical and marketing infrastructure liberalization has in effect reinforced the ex ante hierarchy across regions in nepal the paper then reviews the role and reform of the nepal food corporation nfc within this broader context

corporate tax holidays and investments governments of developing countries commonly adopt tax holidays to encourage investment this article evaluates the incentives provided by company income tax holidays and explains the importance of the timing of depreciation allowances in determining the effective tax rates and the cost of capital to firms considering additional investment during the holiday if an asset is long lived and depreciation allowances for tax purposes are accelerated the tax holiday by preventing depreciation deductions during the periods of peak profits may actually penalize a company for investing during the holiday the closer the investment to the end of the holiday period the more severe the penalty if instead depreciation allowances may be deferred until after the holiday this program of incentives is quite generous to the firm how these sharply contrasting results may emerge is illustrated through estimation of effective tax rates and user costs of capital under tax holiday systems in bangladesh cote d ivoire malaysia morocco and thailand

american taxation of multinational firms publisher summary this chapter discusses the american taxation of multinational firms it is assumed that a multinational firm starts with an existing stock of foreign and domestic investment and seeks the optimal change in its position over the next year as the earnings generated by existing investments are an important source of capital for new investment one cannot ignore the role of the past in shaping the present the chapter presents an analysis that focuses not only on the levels of foreign and domestic investment but also on the financing of that investment it is also assumed that the foreign subsidiary can deduct from its taxable income interest on intrafirm debt as well as royalties head office charges and other such payments for intrafirm services

transfer pricing rules and corporate tax competition abstract a multinational parent sells a non marketed commodity to a foreign subsidiary that uses the product as an input to produce a product it then sells the subsidiary is controlled by a local managing partner whose compensation consists of a lump sum payment plus a share of the subsidiary s profit the parent chooses an optimal transfer price taking into account incentives for the subsidiary s managing partner and taxes home and host governments impose corporate income taxes on the parent and subsidiary s respective profits subject to a transfer pricing rule e g cost plus price method or comparable profit method a nash equilibrium is derived for effective tax rates chosen by home and host governments we then examine harmonization and suggest that tax rates would be reduced

entrepreneurship and development the role of information asymmetries this article reviews the literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development and introduces four symposium articles a common thread is that information asymmetries are important determinants of access to finance in young entrepreneurial firms policy recommendations are provided that will increase the positive role of entrepreneurship in economic development

public policy markets and household coping strategies in bangladesh avoiding a food security crisis following the 1998 floods abstract at their peak the 1998 floods covered two thirds of bangladesh causing severe damage to the major rice crop and threatening the food security of tens of millions of households in this paper we first highlight the contribution of government policy interventions including trade liberalization in the early 1990s to stabilization of rice markets during and after the flood then using a panel data set covering 750 households in three rounds over a 13 month period we analyze impacts of the flood on household assets consumption and nutritional outcomes finally we present empirical estimates of the contribution of rice market stabilization and government transfers to household food consumption

foreign direct investment in a world of multiple taxes abstract governments impose multiple taxes on foreign investors though studies of the effect of tax policy on the location of foreign direct investment fdi focus almost exclusively on corporate income taxes this paper examines the impact of indirect non income taxes on fdi by american multinational firms using affiliate level data that permit the introduction of controls for parent companies and affiliate industries indirect tax burdens significantly exceed the foreign income tax obligations of foreign affiliates of american companies estimates imply that 10 higher local indirect tax rates are associated with 7 1 lower affiliate assets which is similar to the effect of 10 higher income tax rates affiliate output falls by 2 9 as indirect taxes rise by 10 while higher income taxes have more modest output effects high corporate income tax rates depress capital labor ratios and profit rates of foreign affiliates whereas high indirect tax rates do not these patterns reveal the impact of indirect taxes and suggest the mechanisms by which direct and indirect taxes affect fdi

taxation and the user cost of capital this paper provides a review of the concept of user cost and its determinants particular attention is given to the influence of taxation the concept of user cost relates to the rental the rate of return to capital that arises in a profit maximizing situation in which further investment in capital produces no additional profit this paper sets out in some detail the range of assumptions involved in obtaining alternative expressions for the user cost the user cost refers to a before tax capital rental the rate of return that ensures that the after tax cost of capital is equal to the post tax returns over its life hence associated with the user cost measure is an effective marginal tax rate this can differ substantially from the statutory marginal rate applicable to the investor a related effective average tax rate is also defined

does a picture paint a thousand words evidence from a microcredit marketing experiment female entrepreneurship is low in many developing economies partly because of constraints on women s time and mobility which are often reinforced by social norms this paper analyzes a marketing experiment designed to encourage women to adopt a new microcredit product a brochure with the same content but two different covers was randomly distributed among male and female borrowing groups one cover featured five businesses run by men while the other showed identical businesses run by women men and women responded to psychological cues among men who were not business owners had lower measured ability and whose wives were less educated the responses to the female brochure were more negative as did female business owners with low autonomy within the household women with relatively high levels of autonomy had a similar negative response to the male brochure while there was no effect on female business owners with autonomy overall these results suggest that women s response to psychological cues such as positive role models may be affected by their level of autonomy at home and more intensive interventions may be required for more disadvantaged women

the role of information and social interactions in retirement plan decisions evidence from a randomized experiment this paper analyzes a randomized experiment to shed light on the role of information and social interactions in employees decisions to enroll in a tax deferred account tda retirement plan within a large university the experiment encouraged a random sample of employees in a subset of departments to attend a benee ts information fair organized by the university by promising a monetary reward for attendance the experiment multiplied by more than e ve the attendance rate of these treated individuals relative to controls and tripled that of untreated individuals within departments where some individuals were treated tda enrollment e ve and eleven months after the fair was signie cantly higher in departments where some individuals were treated than in departments where nobody was treated however the effect on tda enrollment is almost as large for individuals in treated departments who did not receive the encouragement as for those who did we provide three interpretations differential treatment effects social network effects and motivational reward effects to account for these results

nobody s business but my own self employment and small enterprise in economic development abstract in most poor countries small firms and self employment are the dominant forms of business enterprise even in the manufacturing sector for rich countries in contrast self employed people account for very small shares of manufacturing employment and output this paper builds on lucas 1978 on the size distribution of business firms bell journal of economics 9 2 508 523 to ask whether structural changes of this kind are driven by productivity differences a model calibrated to japanese time series data is shown to mimic key features of cross country and time series data the results support the idea that changes in aggregate productivity account for much of the cross country variation in establishment size and self employment rates

entry industry growth and the microdynamics of industry supply entry is widely discussed but rarely subjected to empirical study this study develops a competitive theory of entry with primary focus on the relationship between entry and industry growth the main ingredients are adjustment costs to firms already in the industry and the distribution of fixed entry cost to potential entrants the theory suggests sufficient conditions under which the entry rate is an increasing convex function of the industry growth rate a regression model correcting for severe heteroscedasticity is applied to data from swedish manufacturing industries the results are consistent with the theoretical prediction for growth and other key variables expected to influence entry significantly

foreign profits and domestic investment abstract the paper considers investment incentives in corporate tax systems which grant an imputation credit to shareholders when dividends are distributed from domestic sources an increase in the dividend tax rate which is induced by lowering the shareholders imputation rate is shown to potentially depress domestic investment this result is common to old view models which assume that new equity is the marginal source of firms finance in this paper however the result is derived in a tax capitalization framework where retentions are the marginal source of finance and dividend tax rates are usually regarded as neutral

regional trade government policy and food security recent evidence from zambia given heavy dependence on rainfed maize production countries in east and southern africa must routinely cope with pronounced production and consumption volatility in their primary food staple typical policy responses include increased food aid flows government commercial imports and stock releases and tight controls on private sector trade this paper examines recent evidence from zambia using a simple economic model to assess the likely impact of maize production shocks on the domestic maize price and on staple food consumption under alternative policy regimes in addition to an array of public policy instruments the analysis evaluates the impact of two key private sector responses in moderating food consumption volatility private cross border maize trade and consumer substitution of an alternate food staple cassava for maize the analysis suggests that given a favorable policy environment private imports and increased cassava consumption together could fill roughly two thirds of the maize consumption shortfall facing vulnerable households during drought years

the impact of market liberalisation on food security in zambia abstract the main elements in agricultural market liberalisation have been the dismantling of the state institutions for marketing and distribution of agricultural produce the abolition of subsidies the liberalisation of import and export trade and the market determination of input and output prices economic policy reforms on the monetary fiscal and other fronts also impinged on the variables influencing production trade and consumption this paper highlights some of the undesirable offshoots of the previous policy regime and enumerates the specific policies that have been introduced since 1992 it describes the positive and negative outcomes witnessed so far finally it suggests what needs to be done to eliminate the prevailing major constraints to growth in food production and consumption

shining a light on the resource curse an empirical analysis of the relationship between natural resources transparency and economic growth summary one of the most common policy prescriptions for overcoming the so called resource curse particularly for extractive industries has been to call for greater transparency and accountability from governments however despite the conceptual attraction of this policy it has never been empirically proven that resource rich countries are actually less transparent than other countries and whether this lack of transparency has had a significant negative effect on economic growth using a relatively new index of transparency that has extensive coverage both across countries and time the results suggest a strong and robust negative causal association running from point resource export revenues to transparency furthermore there is also some evidence that this lack of transparency is associated with a subsequent decrease in economic growth

enhancing food security in south sudan the role of markets and regional trade south sudan faces serious problems of food insecurity due to low levels of domestic food production periodic droughts widespread poverty and since late 2013 renewed armed conflict this article explores market price behavior using cointegration analysis and estimates the effects of production and trade shocks through multimarket model simulations we show that market prices in the capital city juba of both maize and sorghum are cointegrated with import parity prices of these cereals sourced from uganda consistent with observed trade flows model simulations using econometrically estimated demand parameters suggest that private sector imports of maize and wheat would greatly mitigate the potential fall in consumption in the case of a decline in domestic cereal production other simulations indicate that if total imports of cereals are reduced by one third still more than two times the levels of food aid in 2013 because of disruptions to private market flows domestic prices of cereals could rise by 45 or more the article concludes that whatever measures are taken involving national food security reserves it is crucial that government policy serves to maintain incentives for private sector imports to avoid destabilizing market supplies domestic prices and ultimately food consumption of the poor

the tax sensitivity of us direct investment in canadian manufacturing abstract this paper analyzes the impact of canadian and us tax systems on direct investment flows between the two countries regression results from two direct investment models confirm the tax sensitivity of international investment flows and indicate that lower effective tax rates in canada have led to excessive american investment in canadian manufacturing though the resulting welfare losses to date have been relatively small simulations suggest that the introduction of other more nationalistic tax systems by te united states would have produced significant welfare losses

european tax harmonisation and production efficiency this paper analyses the impact on production efficiency of potential harmonisation of the taxation of income from capital in the european union it develops and applies a methodology for computing the cost of capital for transnational investments to assess the degree to which production efficiency holds in the eu it considers the impact of potential forms of corporation tax harmonisation the results indicate that some commonly advocated reforms e g harmonising tax rates or tax bases would not significantly move the tax system towards production efficiency but that other reforms which affect the taxation of cross border flows would have more impact

the effectiveness of corporate tax incentives for foreign investment in the presence of tax crediting abstract the value of corporate tax holiday incentives provided by central eastern europe cee countries to attract foreign investment depends on whether a multinational company must pay corporate income taxes to its home government on income remitted from abroad i e the multinational is said to be in a deficient credit position if foreign taxes paid are less than the home country tax owing on foreign source income this paper examines the value of corporate tax incentives given to manufacturing companies investing in cee countries taking into account both the host country tax regime and the u s tax treatment of foreign source investment

determinants of food security in southern ethiopia at the household level in the early 1980s a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security following amartya sens 1981 claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern affecting the poor s access to food than a supply concern affecting availability of food at the national level despite the wide acceptance of sen s thinking many controversies including the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles this study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following singh et al 1986 and parses out the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in determining household food security in southern ethiopia based on results of a test of full reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security we conclude that the supply side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand side variables

developmental drivers of nutritional change a cross country analysis summary we utilize a rich cross country data set to understand within country changes in nutrition with a focus on the role of general developmental factors we find that economic growth is a strong predictor of nutritional performance as is growth in food production although only in more food insecure countries we find no evidence that infrastructure is directly important but greater asset ownership improved access to health services higher rates of female secondary education and lower fertility rates are all strong predictors of improvements in nutrition we show that national success stories are largely consistent with these findings

does trade openness contribute to food security a dynamic panel analysis abstract despite significant progress in the fight against hunger during the last decades food insecurity remains a major problem in many countries especially developing ones in this study we use a large cross country data to investigate the impact of trade openness and other factors on food security measured by dietary energy consumption we employ a system gmm approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity correlated individual effects and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables the empirical results reveal that trade openness and economic growth exert positive and significant impacts on dietary energy consumption and also contribute to improvements in dietary diversity the results are robust to the inclusion of additional variables capturing specific agro climatic constraints e g weather related and regional country characteristics and to the sample composition most geographical regions are found to have significantly higher food security levels compared to sub saharan africa additional results indicate that besides calorie consumption trade openness also improves dietary diversity and diet quality related aspects of food security

foreign tax credits the supply of foreign capital and tax exporting a numerical general equilibrium model of corporate tax reform in canada abstract this paper employs a numerical general equilibrium model to emphasize the importance of tax exporting in determining the welfare effects of tax changes in open economies tax exporting occurs through both changes in the terms of trade and changes in the net return paid to foreign owned capital results indicate that tax exporting may be as significant as efficiency in evaluating potential reforms moreover efficiency effects are strongly influenced by whether foreign capital flows are modelled as responding to the gross rental on capital or to the net rental in consideration of the role of foreign tax credits