A framework for introducing the private finance initiative in Brunei Darussalam construction industry.

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a common, and sometimes preferred, approach to funding public projects without immediate recourse to the public purse, in the construction industry in developed countries throughout the world. It is, also, increasingly gaining popularity among developing countries. Brunei Darussalam is a developing country located on the northern coast of the island of Borneo in South East Asia with an interest in exploring how it can effectively employ the PFI approach to project finance in its construction industry. Against this background, a comprehensive desk study was undertaken together with an analysis of the relevant processes of government in Brunei Darussalam and a framework developed to facilitate the smooth introduction of PFI in the country’s construction industry. The framework was built around four main dimensions: organisation, training, participation and implementation. The framework was evaluated through a survey of managerial level civil servants in Brunei Darussalam’s Ministry of Development. The framework was found to be easy to understand, comprehensive, consistent with government processes and acceptable at all relevant Ministry levels. The framework provides a useful starting point on Brunei Darussalam’s journey towards effective implementation of PFI in its construction industry

Social Welfare and Coercion in Public Finance

This paper develops an expanded framework for social planning in which the existence of coercion is explicitly acknowledged. Key issues concern the precise definition of coercion for individuals and in the aggregate, its difference from redistribution, and its incorporation into normative analysis. We explore modifications to traditional rules for optimal fiscal policy in the presence of coercion constraints and determine the degree of coercion implied by traditional social planning. The paper maps the trade-off between social welfare and aggregate coercion and explores its implications for normative policy and the comparative evaluation of institutions, including competitive democracy.coercion, redistribution, social planning, optimal fiscal policy, marginal cost of funds, public goods, collective choice

Home Production, Market Production and the Gender Wage Gap: Incentives and Expectations

The purpose of this paper is to study the joint determination of gender differentials in labor market outcomes and in the household division of labor. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that incentive problems in the labor market amplify differences in earnings due to gender differentials in home hours. In turn, earnings differentials reinforce the division of labor within the household, leading to a potentially self-fulfilling feedback mechanism. The workings of the labor market are key in our story. The main assumptions are that the utility cost of work effort is increasing in home hours, and that higher effort should correspond to higher incentive pay. Household decisions are Pareto efficient, leading to a negative correlation between relative home hours and earnings across spouses. We use the Census and the PSID to study these predictions and find that they are supported by the data.

Incorporation and Taxation: Theory and Firm-level Evidence

This paper provides a theory and firm-level evidence on the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs in a model of taxes and corporate governance. The theory explains how the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs is driven by taxation (corporate and personal income taxes), corporate transparency, access to external capital and limited liability. We estimate features of this model using a large cross-section of more than 540, 000 firms in European manufacturing. We find that higher personal income tax rates favor incorporation while higher corporate tax rates reduce the probability to incorporate. These findings are robust to the inclusion of other economic and institutional determinants of external financing and choice of organizational form.incorporation, governance, taxes, discrete choice models

Taxation of Corporate Capital Income: Tax Revenues vs. Tax Distortions

Since the average tax rate on corporate capital income is very high, economists often conclude that taxes have caused a substantial fall in corporate investment, a movement of capital into noncorporate uses, and a fall in personal savings. The combined efficiency costs of these distortions are believed to be very important. This paper attempts to show that when uncertainty and inflation are taken into account explicitly, taxation of corporate income leaves corporate investment incentives basically unaffected, in spite of the sizable tax revenues collected. In addition, in some plausible situations, such taxes can result in a gain in efficiency. The explanation for these surprising results is that the government, by taxing capital income, absorbs a certain fraction of both the expected return and the uncertainty in the return. While investors as a result receive a lower expected return, they also bear less risk when they invest, and these two effects are largely offsetting.

Law and Equity Markets: a Simple Model

We analyze how the law and its enforcement affect equity market equilibrium. Improvements in the legal system, while invariably associated with broader equity markets, have different effects on equity returns depending on the institutional change considered and on the degree of international stock market segmentation. The model is useful to interpret the results of recent empirical work, such as La Porta et al. (1997) and Lombardo and Pagano (1999). In particular, it can rationalize the observed cross-country pattern, whereby better institutions are associated both with broader equity markets and higher risk-adjusted returns on equity.law, enforcement, shareholder protection, corporate governance, return on equity

Hedging bond portfolios versus infinitely many ranked factors of risk

The paper considers bond portfolios affected by both interest-rate- and default-risk. In order to guarantee a correct performance of our analysis we will hedge against an infinite number of factors. Hence we do not have to impose and do not depend on any assumption concerning the dynamic behavior of the term structure of interest rates. On the other hand, since a complete hedging is not feasible unless some ideal situations hold, we rank the factors according to the empirical evidence. Thus, we make the most important risks vanish and we minimize the effect of those kinds of risk less usual in practice