Tax Competition as a Challenge to the Governance of Global Economy

The paper analyses the role of tax competition in global economy. How can tax systems respond to the challenge - by international cooperation or by national rules, by tax harmonisation or by tax competition? In this paper we approach the question as a matter of global governance. Tax competition is seen both as a means and as an object of global governance. Our conclusion is that there is no universal answer to the question: competition or harmonisation? Attempts to govern the processes of global economy on a national level may easily lead to tax competition. On the other hand, at least at the supranational level, i.e. at regional or global level, the goals and mechanisms of governance seem to emphasise harmonisation. Nowadays especially the OECD has become an important actor or forum for cooperation in taxation. It has succeeded in many ways in preventing and reducing harmful tax competition. The soft law mechanisms developed by the OECD have often been converted into the hard law mechanisms on national level. The governance activities have been based on both soft law and hard law mechanisms

Models suggesting field experiments to test two hypotheses explaining successional diversity

A simple mathematical model of competition is developed that includes two alternative mechanisms promoting successional diversity. The first underpins the competition-colonization hypothesis in which early successional species are able to persist because they colonize disturbed habitats before the arrival of late successional dominant competitors. The second underpins the niche hypothesis, in which early successional species are able to persist, even with unlimited colonization by late successional dominants, because they specialize on the resource-rich conditions typical of recently disturbed sites. We modify the widely studied competition-colonization model so that it also includes the mechanism behind the niche hypothesis. Analysis of this model suggests simple experiments that determine whether the successional diversity of a field system is maintained primarily by the competition-colonization mechanism, primarily by the niche mechanism, by neither, or by both. We develop quantitative metrics of the relative importance of the two mechanisms. We also discuss the implications for the management of biodiversity in communities structured by the two mechanisms

Analysis of B cell selection mechanisms in the adaptive immune response

The essential task of a germinal centre reaction is the selection of those B cells that bind the antigen with high affinity. The exact mechanisms of B cell selection is still unknown and rather difficult to be accessed in experiment. With the help of an already established agent-based model for the space-time-dynamics of germinal centre reactions [1,2] we compare the most important hypotheses for what the limiting factor for B cell rescue may be. We discuss competition for antigen sites on follicular dendritic cells, a refractory time for centrocytes after every encounter with follicular dendritic cells, competition for the antigen itself, the role of antigen masking with soluble antibodies, and competition for T cell help. The unexpected result is that neither competition for interaction sites nor competition for antigen nor antigen masking are in agreement with present experimental data on germinal centre reactions. We show that these most popular selection mechanisms do not lead to sufficient affinity maturation and do not respect the observed robustness against changes of initial conditions. However, the best agreement with data was found for the newly hypothesized centrocyte refractory time and for competition for T cell help. Thus the in silico experiments point towards selection mechanisms that are not in the main focus of current germinal centre research. Possible experiments to test these hypotheses are proposed

Psychological and physiological adaptations to sperm competition in humans

Postcopulatory competition between males, in the form of sperm competition, is a widespread phenomenon in many animal species. The extent to which sperm competition has been an important selective pressure during human evolution remains controversial, however. The authors review critically the evidence that human males and females have psychological, behavioral, and physiological adaptations that evolved in response to selection pressures associated with sperm competition. The authors consider, using evidence from contemporary societies, whether sperm competition is likely to have been a significant adaptive problem for ancestral humans and examine the evidence suggesting that human males have physiological and psychological mechanisms that allow for “prudent” sperm allocation in response to variations in the risk of sperm competition

How self-regulation, the storage effect and their interaction contribute to coexistence in stochastic and seasonal environments

Explaining coexistence in species-rich communities of primary producers remains a challenge for ecologists because of their likely competition for shared resources. Following Hutchinson's seminal suggestion, many theoreticians have tried to create diversity through a fluctuating environment, which impairs or slows down competitive exclusion. However, fluctuating-environment models often only produce a dozen of coexisting species at best. Here, we investigate how to create richer communities in fluctuating environments, using an empirically parameterized model. Building on the forced Lotka-Volterra model of Scranton and Vasseur (Theor Ecol 9(3):353-363, 2016), inspired by phytoplankton communities, we have investigated the effect of two coexistence mechanisms, namely the storage effect and higher intra- than interspecific competition strengths (i.e., strong self-regulation). We tuned the intra/inter competition ratio based on empirical analyses, in which self-regulation dominates interspecific interactions. Although a strong self-regulation maintained more species (50%) than the storage effect (25%), we show that none of the two coexistence mechanisms considered could ensure the coexistence of all species alone. Realistic seasonal environments only aggravated that picture, as they decreased persistence relative to a random environment. However, strong self-regulation and the storage effect combined superadditively so that all species could persist with both mechanisms at work. Our results suggest that combining different coexistence mechanisms into community models might be more fruitful than trying to find which mechanism best explains diversity. We additionally highlight that while biomass-trait distributions provide some clues regarding coexistence mechanisms, they cannot indicate unequivocally which mechanisms are at play.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, Theor Ecol (2019

Regulation mechanisms in spatial stochastic development models

The aim of this paper is to analyze different regulation mechanisms in spatial continuous stochastic development models. We describe the density behavior for models with global mortality and local establishment rates. We prove that the local self-regulation via a competition mechanism (density dependent mortality) may suppress a unbounded growth of the averaged density if the competition kernel is superstable.Comment: 19 page

Adam Smith’s Bourgeois Virtues in Competition

Whether or not capitalism is compatible with ethics is a long standing dispute. We take up an approach to virtue ethics inspired by Adam Smith and consider how market competition influences the virtues most associated with modern commercial society. Up to a point, competition nurtures and supports such virtues as prudence, temperance, civility, industriousness and honesty. But there are also various mechanisms by which competition can have deleterious effects on the institutions and incentives necessary for sustaining even these most commercially friendly of virtues. It is often supposed that if competitive markets are good, more competition must always be better. However, in the long run competition enhancing policies that neglect the nurturing and support of the bourgeois virtues may undermine the continued flourishing of modern commercial society