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The Tax Complexity Index – A Survey-Based Country Measure of Tax Code and Framework Complexity
Full text linkThis paper introduces the Tax Complexity Index (TCI). The TCI comprehensively measures the complexity of countries’ corporate income tax systems faced by multinational corporations. It builds on surveys of highly experienced tax consultants of the largest international tax services networks. The TCI is composed of a tax code subindex covering tax regulations and a tax framework subindex covering tax processes and features. For a sample of 100 countries, we find that tax complexity varies considerably across countries, and tax code and framework complexity also vary within countries. Among others, tax complexity is strongly driven by the complexity of transfer pricing regulations in the tax code and tax audits in the tax framework. When analyzing the associations with other country characteristics, we identify different patterns. For example, we find a positive association of GDP with tax code complexity and a negative association with tax framework complexity, suggesting that highly economically developed countries tend to have more complex tax codes and less complex frameworks. Overall, the tax complexity measures can serve as valuable proxies in future research and supportive tools for a variety of firm decisions and national and international tax policy discussions.Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Serie
Translation, cultural adaptation and construct validity of the German version of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for informal Carers (German ASCOT-Carer)
Full text linkPurpose: The Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for Carers (ASCOT-Carer), developed in England, measures the effects of long-term care (LTC) services and carer support on informal carers’ quality of life (QoL). Translations of the ASCOT-Carer into other languages are useful for national and cross-national studies. The aim of this paper was to report on the translation and cultural adaptation of the original English ASCOT-Carer into German, to assess its content validity and to test for its construct validity (convergent and discriminative/known-group validity).
Methods: Translation and cultural adaptation followed the ISPOR TCA guidelines. As part of the translation and adaptation process, five cognitive debriefing interviews with informal carers were used for evaluating linguistic and content validity. In addition, a sample of 344 informal carers of older adults, who received home care services in Austria, was used for hypothesis testing as suggested by the COSMIN checklist to assess convergent and discriminative/known-group validity as part of construct validity.
Results: Cognitive interviews provided evidence that questions and response options of the German ASCOT-Carer were understood as intended. Associations between ASCOT-Carer scores/domains and related outcome measures (convergent validity) and expected groups of informal carers and the care service users they care for (discriminative validity) supported construct validity of the translated instrument.
Conclusion: The German ASCOT-Carer instrument meets the required standards for content and construct validity which supports its usefulness for (cross-)national studies on LTC-service-related QoL-outcomes in informal carers. Research is encouraged to assess further measurement properties of the translated instrument
The History of Pollution ‘Externalities’ in Economic Thought
Full text linkToday, environmental economics is the response of the neoclassical economic school to the
ecological crisis, but at one time its leading contributors regarded it as a revolutionary development
that would change the conduct and content of economics as a discipline. Understanding and
addressing environmental pollution was core to that potential paradigm shift. In tracing the history
of conceptualising pollution as an externality and market failure this paper covers the development
of ideas by Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Coase, Stigler, Samuelson, Ciciacy-Wantrup and Kapp.
Pollution externality theory is shown to have incorporated an elitist ethics and liberal market
ideology. As a market failure pollution was deemed a minor correctible error of the price system.
Monetary valuation of social and environmental harm became the means of justifying optimal levels
of pollution. Neoliberal theories of spreading property rights further watered down potential
interventionist aspects. Bio-physical realism, in the work of Kneese, Ayres and d’Arge, and social
realism in Kapp’s theory of cost shifting were lost once environmental economics adopted a
deductivist mathematical formalism. Kapp’s alternative theory is based on a classic institutionalists
economic understanding of cost shifting and power relations. It advocates a public policy response
in the form of objective social minima achieved via regulation and planning. This theory has until
now been successfully supressed to prevent a potential revolutionary paradigm shift in economic price theory.Series: SRE - Discussion Paper
Intra-industry diversification effects under firm-specific contingencies on the demand side
No full textHow do firm-specific, demand-related factors influence the relationship between intra-industry diversification (IID) and performance? Recent findings regarding the performance effects of IID depict a complex picture with curvilinear relationships and several contingencies. However, firm-specific contingencies on the demand side have remained unexplored. We analyze how IID relates to firm performance (market share) in the German automotive industry using panel data between 1999 and 2008. We specifically focus on a firm’s high-quality brand image as a demand-side contingency. We find support for our hypotheses of complex curvilinear relationships as well as for moderating effects of brand quality. Our results have significant theoretical implications for the IID literature.Security: staffonl
The emergence and adoption of digitalization in the logistics and supply chain industry: an institutional perspective
Full text linkPurpose – Despite increasing interest in digital services and products, the emergence of digitalization in the logistics and supply chain (L&SC) industry has received little attention, in particular from organizational theorists. In response, taking an institutionalist view, the authors argue that the emergence and adoption of digitalization is a socially constructed phenomenon.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper shows how actor-level frameshifts contribute to an emergence of an overarching “digitalization logic” in the L&SC industry at the field level. Building on a longitudinal analysis of field actors’ frames and logics, the authors track the development of digitalization over the last 60 years in the L&SC sector.
Findings – The authors classify specific time periods by key field-configuring events, describe the relevant frameshifts in each time period and present a process that explains how and why digitalization has emerged, been adopted and manifested itself in the L&SC industry.
Originality/value – The findings of the study provide insights about the evolution of a digitalization logic and thus advance the institutional view on digitalization in the L&SC industry
“Evacuate everyone south of that line” Analyzing structural communication patterns during natural disasters
No full textIn this paper, we analyze more than 16 million tweets that have been sent from 6.1 million Twitter accounts and are related to nine natural disasters. As part of our analysis, we identify eight basic emotions conveyed in these tweets. We found that during natural disasters, social media messages at first predominantly express fear, while sadness and positive emotions increase in the immediate aftermath of the event. In this context, positive emotions contribute to the social phenomenon of emotional bonding and are often related to compassion, gratitude, as well as donations for disaster relief. In our analysis, we found that the users’ emotional expressions directly contribute to the emergence of the underlying communication network. In particular, we identified statistically significant structural patterns that we call emotion-exchange motifs and show that: (1) the motifs 021U and 021D are common for the communication of all eight emotions considered in this study, (2) motifs which include bidirectional edges (i.e. online conversations) are generally not characteristic for the communication of surprise, sadness, and disgust, (3) the structural analysis of a set of emotions (rather than a single emotion) leads to the formation of more complex motifs representing more complex social interactions, and (4) the messaging patterns emerging from the communication of joy and sadness show the highest structural similarity, even reaching a perfect similarity score at some point during the data-extraction period
Process- and Outcome-Based Financial Incentives to Improve Self-Management and Glycemic Control in People with Type 2 Diabetes in Singapore: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Full text linkBackground: Sub-optimally controlled diabetes increases risks for adverse and costly complications. Self-management including glucose monitoring, medication adherence, and exercise are key for optimal glycemic control, yet, poor self-management remains common.
Objective: The main objective of the Trial to Incentivize Adherence for Diabetes (TRIAD) study was to determine the effectiveness of financial incentives in improving glycemic control among type 2 diabetes patients in Singapore, and to test whether process-based incentives tied to glucose monitoring, medication adherence, and physical activity are more effective than outcome-based incentives tied to achieving normal glucose readings.
Methods: TRIAD is a randomized, controlled, multi-center superiority trial. A total of 240 participants who had at least one recent glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) being 8.0% or more and on oral diabetes medication were recruited from two polyclinics. They were block-randomized (blocking factor: current vs. new glucometer users) into the usual care plus (UC +) arm, process-based incentive arm, and outcome-based incentive arm in a 2:3:3 ratio. The primary outcome was the mean change in HbA1c at month 6 and was linearly regressed on binary variables indicating the intervention arms, baseline HbA1c levels, a binary variable indicating titration change, and other baseline characteristics.
Results: Our findings show that the combined incentive arms trended toward better HbA1c than UC + , but the difference is estimated with great uncertainty (difference − 0.31; 95% confidence interval [CI] − 0.67 to 0.06). Lending credibility to this result, the proportion of participants who reduced their HbA1c is higher in the combined incentive arms relative to UC + (0.18; 95% CI 0.04, 0.31). We found a small improvement in process- relative to outcome-based incentives, but this was again estimated with great uncertainty (difference − 0.05; 95% CI − 0.42 to 0.31). Consistent with this improvement, process-based incentives were more effective at improving weekly medication adherent days (0.64; 95% CI − 0.04 to 1.32), weekly physically active days (1.37; 95% CI 0.60–2.13), and quality of life (0.04; 95% CI 0.0–0.07) than outcome-based incentives.
Conclusion: This study suggests that both incentive types may be part of a successful self-management strategy. Process-based incentives can improve adherence to intermediary outcomes, while outcome-based incentives focus on glycemic control and are simpler to administer
Aligning the design of intermediary organisations with the ecosystem
Full text linkIntermediary organisations such as technology transfer organisations (TTOs) are an important mechanism of open ecosystem governance, as they support how ecosystem participants search for knowledge. While scholars have identified TTO activities to support knowledge search, little is known about how these activities relate to the struc-tural dimensions of TTOs or ecosystem-level factors. We propose that ecosystem search scope and problem complexity are key ecosystem- level factors that influence how TTOs support knowledge search. We further argue that coupling, specialisation, centralisation, and forma-lisation are the key structural dimensions of TTOs. We combine these arguments to develop TTO designs that detail the interplay of the structural dimensions and activities of a TTO given varying ecosys-tem-level factors. Our paper contributes to research on the open governance of ecosystems, ecosystem structures, and the ecosystem structure–intermediary organisations relation
Inequality is rising where social network segregation interacts with urban topology
Full text linkSocial networks amplify inequalities by fundamental mechanisms of social tie formation such as homophily and triadic closure. These forces sharpen social segregation, which is reflected in fragmented social network structure. Geographical impediments such as distance and physical or administrative boundaries also reinforce social segregation. Yet, less is known about the joint relationships between social network structure, urban geography, and inequality. In this paper we analyze an online social network and find that the fragmentation of social networks is significantly higher in towns in which residential neighborhoods are divided by physical barriers such as rivers and railroads. Towns in which neighborhoods are relatively distant from the center of town and amenities are spatially concentrated are also more socially segregated. Using a two-stage model, we show that these urban geography features have significant relationships with income inequality via social network fragmentation. In other words, the geographic features of a place can compound economic inequalities via social networks
Agricultural Commodity Price Dynamics and their Determinants: A Comprehensive Econometric Approach
Full text linkWe present a comprehensive modelling framework aimed at quantifying the
response of agricultural commodity prices to changes in their potential
determinants. The problem of model uncertainty is assessed explicitly by concentrating
on specification selection based on the quality of short-term out-of-sample forecasts (1 to 12 months ahead) for the price of wheat, soybeans
and corn. Univariate and multivariate autoregressive models (autoregressive
[AR], vector autoregressive [VAR] and vector error correction [VEC] specifications,
estimated using frequentist and Bayesian methods), specifications with
heteroskedastic errors (AR conditional heteroskedastic [ARCH] and generalized
AR conditional heteroskedastic [GARCH] models) and combinations of
these are entertained, including information about market fundamentals, macroeconomic
and financial developments, and climatic variables. In addition,
we assess potential non-linearities in the commodity price dynamics along the
business cycle. Our results indicate that variables measuring market fundamentals
and macroeconomic developments (and, to a lesser extent, financial
developments) contain systematic predictive information for out-of-sample
forecasting of commodity prices and that agricultural commodity prices react
robustly to shocks in international competitiveness, as measured by changes in
the real exchange rate