ERN: National最新文献

{"title":"Why Adopt a Federal Constitution? And Why Decentralize? – Determinants Based on a New Dataset","authors":"Jerg Gutmann, S. Voigt","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2962625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2962625","url":null,"abstract":"Measurement of both federalism and decentralization has been contentious. We introduce three new indicators reflecting important aspects of both federalism and decentralization. The three new indicators are the result of principal component analysis. When we try to identify their main determinants, it turns out that the only explanatory variable that is significantly correlated with all three is the geographical size of a country. Other variables, such as the size of the population, linguistic fractionalization, or the level of democracy, only help to explain variation of one component. We interpret this as evidence that it is important to distinguish between federalism and decentralization, if one is interested in ascertaining their causes and consequences. We further test for the first time the effect of spatial inequality in a country on the adoption of federalism or decentralization and we find that it correlates significantly with constitutional federalism. This suggests that economically heterogeneous states are more likely to adopt a federal constitution.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125637625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Quantitative Effects of Tax Foresight: Not All States Are Equal","authors":"Ana María Herrera, Sandeep Kumar Rangaraju","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2942390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2942390","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the effect of federal tax news on state economic activity. We estimate a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) model, which allows us to consider the possibility that unobserved factors – such as credit and fiscal conditions – might be relevant for modeling the dynamic response of aggregate and state-level economic activity. We identify tax foresight as a shock to the implicit tax rate, measured by the yield spread between the one-year tax-exempt municipal bond and the one-year taxable Treasury bond. Our results suggest that an increase in the implicit tax rate raises national output over much of the anticipation period. In addition, anticipated tax increases give rise to expansions in state personal income and employment. We find that the variation in the responsiveness of economic activity across states is mostly explained by differences in industrial composition and income distribution, as well as by some demographic characteristics such as median income and education. Finally, using a proxy for exogenous changes in federal tax revenues, we investigate the dynamics of state-level personal income and employment. Our results point to considerable heterogeneity in the response across U.S. states. Moreover, they reveal that the long-run multiplier for an anticipated increase in tax revenues is about a tenth of the short-run multiplier for an unanticipated increase in taxes.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121214029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The First McGee Annual Report on the Best and Worst States for Business","authors":"Robert W. McGee","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2933684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2933684","url":null,"abstract":"This study is the first annual McGee Report on the best and worst states for business. The fifty states are ranked based on the extent to which they facilitate business creation and expansion. This study incorporated the data collected from five other studies, which included the examination of hundreds of variables. Utah was found to be the most business friendly state; California was least business friendly. States that voted Republican in the 2016 presidential election tended to be more business friendly than states that voted Democratic.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124711332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Federalism and Federalization on the Fintech Frontier","authors":"Brian R. Knight","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3191501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3191501","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of financial technology (fintech) has the potential to provide better-quality financial services to more people. Although these enhanced financial services have arisen to meet consumer need, their regulatory status threatens that progress. Many fintech firms are regulated on a state-by-state basis even though their transactions are interstate, and they compete with firms that enjoy more consistent rules through federal preemption. This dynamic can harm efficiency, competitive equity, and political equity. This paper looks at developments in marketplace lending, money transmission, and online sales of securities in an attempt to identify situations in which greater federalization of the rules may be justified. It also considers a situation in which the federal government should abstain from intervening, even if it has the right to do so. Whether the states or federal government should take the lead in regulating fintech is an emerging and important question whose answer will affect the financial lives of consumers and investors. This paper seeks to begin a conversation about how we determine whether federalism or federalization is appropriate.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"413 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116519453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Preventing Tax Arbitrage via Hybrid Mismatches: BEPS Action 2 and Developing Countries","authors":"Błażej Kuźniacki, A. Turina, Thomas Dubut, Addy Mazz, Natalia Quiñones, Luis Eduardo Schoueri, C. West, P. Pistone, F. Zimmer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2941617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2941617","url":null,"abstract":"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) under Base Erosion and \u0000Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action 2 indicated that tax arbitrage via hybrid mismatch arrangements \"result in a \u0000substantial erosion of the taxable bases of the countries concerned\" and \"have an overall negative impact on \u0000competition, efficiency, transparency and fairness.\" The relevant action allowing for neutralising the effects of \u0000hybrid mismatch arrangements is therefore needed and justified. To achieve that purpose, the OECD \u0000developed different anti-hybrid rules under BEPS Action 2. In that regard, however, one may ask whether \u0000addressing tax arbitrage via hybrid mismatches as proposed by the OECD is of interest and relevance for \u0000developing countries. This paper aims to map that unexplored research area by means of a comparative \u0000analysis in four developing countries - Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, and South Africa.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117258660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"With a Little Help from My Friends: The Effects of Naloxone Access and Good Samaritan Laws on Opioid-Related Deaths","authors":"D. Rees, Joseph J. Sabia, Laura M. Argys, Joshua Latshaw, Dhaval M. Dave","doi":"10.3386/W23171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W23171","url":null,"abstract":"In an effort to address the opioid epidemic, a majority of states have recently passed some version of a Naloxone Access Law (NAL) and/or a Good Samaritan Law (GSL). NALs allow lay persons to administer naloxone, which temporarily counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose; GSLs provide immunity from prosecution for drug possession to anyone who seeks medical assistance in the event of a drug overdose. This study is the first to examine the effect of these laws on opioid-related deaths. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System multiple cause-of-death mortality files for the period 1999-2014, we find that the adoption of a NAL is associated with a 9 to 11 percent reduction in opioid-related deaths. The estimated effect of GLSs on opioid-related deaths is of comparable magnitude, but not statistically significant at conventional levels. Finally, we find that neither NALs nor GSLs increase the recreational use of prescription painkillers.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114332267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Polarized Education Levels and Civil War","authors":"G. Canavire-Bacarreza, Michael Jetter, A. Agudelo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2910292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2910292","url":null,"abstract":"This paper suggests that societies exhibiting a large degree of educational polarization among its populace are systematically more likely to slip into civil conflict and civil war. Intuitively, political preferences and beliefs of highly educated citizens are likely to differ fundamentally from those of uneducated citizens. We propose an index of educational polarization and test its predictive power in explaining the likelihood of civil conflict and civil war, analyzing 146 countries (equivalent to over 93 percent of the world population) from 1950 to 2014. Our results produce strong evidence for a positive, statistically powerful, and economically sizeable relationship. In our benchmark estimation, a one standard deviation increase in educational polarization is associated with a 4.6 and 3.8 percentage point rise in the chances of civil conflict and civil war, respectively. These results are robust to the inclusion of the conventional control variables, country-fixed effects, and country-specific time trends.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123602963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pension Reforms in the EU since the Early 2000's: Achievements and Challenges Ahead","authors":"G. Carone, Per Eckefeldt, L. Giamboni, V. Laine, S. Pamies","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2964933","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2964933","url":null,"abstract":"Most EU Member States have carried out substantial pension reforms over the last decades in order to enhance fiscal sustainability, while maintaining adequate pension income. The intensity of pension reforms has been particularly strong since 2000. These reforms have been implemented through a wide range of measures that have substantially modified the pension system rules and parameters. One of the most important elements of pension reforms, aside of whether countries engaged or not in a systemic change, has been the introduction of mechanisms aimed at automatically adjusting (indexing) the key pension parameters (pension age, benefits, financing resources) to demographic pressure (e.g. changes in life expectancy, increase in the dependency ratio). Indeed, since the mid-1990's, half of the EU Member States have adopted either automatic balancing mechanisms, sustainability factors and / or automatic links between retirement age and life expectancy. All these pension reforms are projected to have a substantial impact on containing future pension expenditure trends. According to the latest long-term projections in the 2015 Ageing Report, public pension expenditure is projected to be close to 11% of GDP over the long run in the EU, almost the same as in 2013. However, the fiscal impact of ageing is still projected to be substantial in many EU countries, becoming apparent already over the course of the next two decades. This is also due to the very gradual phasing in of already legislated reforms, an issue that raises questions about the intergenerational fairness of the reforms and poses some doubt on the time-consistency of their implementation. Indeed, the sustainability-enhancing pension reforms legislated in a majority of EU countries will lead to a reduction of generosity of public pension schemes for future generations of retirees. But to make sure that these reforms will not have to face political and social resistance and risk of reversal in the moment they start to be implemented in full, other \"flanking\" policy measures are likely to be necessary: for example, reforms that boost retirement incomes by effectively extending working lives and employability of older workers (also through flexible working arrangements that allow people to keep working beyond current formal retirement age and to step down gradually from full-time to part-time to very part-time work) and provide other means of retirement incomes (e.g. private pensions) and appropriate social-safety nets to avoid that low-wage people follow back in poverty at old age.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116661229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Are Public Funds Used to Maintain Ruling Coalitions? Evidence from India","authors":"Ishita Rajani","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3054872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3054872","url":null,"abstract":"Political considerations can distort public policies in developing countries, making them less effective. While past literature has focused on incumbent politicians manipulating policies for reelection purposes in two-party settings, around 52% of the world’s democracies have coalition governments. In such settings, a national incumbent can not only allocate funds to woo voters pre-election, but also to buy legislative support from smaller parties post-election. My paper presents a simple framework formalizing these two mechanisms and tests it using a newly constructed dataset of district-level disbursements from India’s Total Sanitation Campaign. These two mechanisms give rise to two distinct patterns in the disbursement of funds: the “Buying Votes Cycle” and the “Patronage Cycle.” The former is the traditional cycle with a pre-election increase (60%) in the release of funds in swing districts for the national parties. The latter is a previously undocumented cycle with a post-election increase (55%) in the release of funds that occurs, as predicted by the model, only in safe districts for smaller parties. Both cycles are large enough to affect the timing of household consumption and hence their welfare.","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123387239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"R. v. Comeau and Section 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867: Freeing the Beer and Fortifying the Economic Union","authors":"Malcolm Lavoie","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2804711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2804711","url":null,"abstract":"A recent decision from the New Brunswick Provincial Court may have significant implications for Canada’s constitutional structure. R. v. Comeau held that s. 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867, the constitution’s internal free trade provision, prohibits both interprovincial tariffs as well as non-tariff trade barriers. In doing so, the court departed from a line of precedents holding that s. 121 prohibits only the erection of outright tariffs or duties on interprovincial trade. Ultimately, the court held that s. 134(b) of New Brunswick’s Liquor Control Act, which effectively prohibits the possession of all but small quantities of liquor purchased out of province, constituted a non-tariff barrier in contravention of s. 121. The Supreme Court of Canada recently granted leave to appeal. The author argues that the judge was correct in holding that s. 121 should extend at least to some non-tariff barriers. Yet the decision leaves important questions unanswered, including how s. 121 can be reconciled with provincial regulatory authority, how a construction of s. 121 should be informed by the constitutional principles of democracy and federalism, and how doctrine can be developed so as to appropriately distinguish between permissible and impermissible non-tariff barriers. The author proposes a framework that aims to reconcile the trial judge’s analysis with these additional considerations. Une decision recente de la Cour provinciale du Nouveau-Brunswick pourrait avoir d’importantes consequences pour la structure constitutionnelle du Canada. Dans R. c. Comeau, le tribunal a declare que l’art. 121 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867, disposition de la Constitution traitant du libre-echange interieur, interdit tant l’imposition de droits tarifaires interprovinciaux que les barrieres non tarifaires au commerce. Ce faisant, le tribunal s’est eloigne de la jurisprudence qui soutient que l’art. 121 interdit uniquement l’imposition de tarifs ou droits tarifaires sur le commerce interprovincial. En fin de compte, le tribunal a juge que le par. 134(b) de la Loi sur la reglementation des alcools du Nouveau-Brunswick, qui interdit carrement la possession d’alcool achete ailleurs que dans la province, sauf de tres petites quantites, constitue une barriere non tarifaire, en contravention de l’art. 121. La Cour supreme du Canada a recemment accorde la permission d’en appeler de la decision. L’auteur fait valoir que le juge a eu raison de considerer que l’art. 121 doit s’appliquer au moins a certains obstacles non tarifaires. La decision laisse neanmoins d’importantes questions en suspens : comment l’art. 121 peut-il etre rapproche de l’organisme de reglementation provincial, comment une interpretation de l’art. 121 devrait-elle s’inspirer des principes constitutionnels de democratie et de federalisme, et comment la doctrine peutelle etre developpee de facon a ce que la distinction appropriee puisse etre faite entre les obstacles non tarifaires admissibles et les obstacl","PeriodicalId":221919,"journal":{"name":"ERN: National","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125750621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}