WP 8 - Tax vasion in transition: Outcome of an institutional clash? -Testing Feige's conjecture

A field survey of households was conducted in Tirana, Albania in 2000. A response rate of 89.3% yielded 1.340 valid questionnaires, allowing us to test Feige's (1997) conjecture that more tax evasion will be observed, when formal and informal institutions clash. Respondents' attitudes towards formal and informal institutions were obtained by applying factor analysis to the responses to a series of attitudinal questions. The results of the analysis support Feige's conjecture. An important implication is that when studying tax evasion one should take country specific institutions (and their interaction) into account. JEL codes: H26, O5, O17 Key Words: tax evasion, transition, formal and informal institutions

Corporate governance, Islamic governance and earnings management in Oman: A new empirical insights from a behavioural theoretical framework

Purpose: This paper examines the impact of corporate (CG) and Islamic (IG) governance mechanisms on corporate earnings management (EM) behaviour in Oman. Design/Methodology/Approach: We employ one of the largest and extensive datasets to-date on CG, IG and EM in any developing country, consisting of a sample of 116 unique Omani listed corporations from 2001 to 2011 (i.e.,1,152 firm-year observations) and a broad CG index containing 72 CG provisions. We also employ a number of robust econometric models that sufficiently account for alternative CG/EM proxies and potential endogeneities. Findings: First, we find that, on average, better-governed corporations tend to engage significantly less in EM than their poorly-governed counterparts. Second, our evidence suggests that corporations that depict greater commitment towards incorporating Islamic religious beliefs and values into their operations through the establishment of an IG committee tend to engage significantly less in EM than their counterparts without such a committee. Finally and by contrast, we do not find any evidence that board size, audit firm size, the presence of a CG committee and board gender diversity have any significant relationship with the extent of EM. Originality: To the best of our knowledge, this is a first empirical attempt at examining the extent to which CG and IG structures may drive EM practices that explicitly seeks to draw new insights from a behavioural theoretical framework (i.e., behavioural theory of corporate boards and governance). Keywords: Corporate governance, Islamic governance, earnings management, behavioural theory, endogeneity, Oman. Paper type: Research pape

Implementation of value added tax and it’s challenges : evidence from Bench Sheko zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia

Purpose: The study was conducted to assess the implementation of value added tax and related challenges the case of Bench Sheko Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia. Methodology: The study is based on descriptive data analysis method and the collected primary data has been carefully coded, checked for consistency and entered into the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) and the secondary data related to VAT collection performance of the revenue bureau from 2010/11 to 2017/18 analysis also done. Finding: The result of the study shows that there are less awareness creation and educational programs, inadequate competence, inadequate enforcement of tax laws, absence of consistent follow-up to assess and register unregistered traders, inadequate infrastructure, weak monitoring, tax evasion, inefficient tax intelligence work and tax auditing. Practical implication: This article offers insights to regional revenue bureau and ministry of revenue to give unreserved attention on it and improve the implementation gaps of VAT through fulfilling the necessary tax administration logistics, enhancing tax education, reducing organizational bureaucracy and improving tax payers’ trust. Lastly, the revenue bureau shall make continuous monitoring and evaluation, maintain accountability and transparency, conduct adequate intelligence and tax auditing to achieve the desired objectives. Significance of the study: The study would notably reveal the way of intervention to revenue minster and policy makers to fill on the gaps found and improve its performance related to VAT administration and collection practice in future.peer-reviewe

Implementing section 404 of the sarbanes oxley act: Recommendations for information systems organizations

Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act addresses the effectiveness of internal controls, which in most organizations are either fully or partially automated due to the pervasiveness and ubiquity of information technologies. Significant or material control deficiencies have to be reported publicly. The adverse impact on organizations declaring deficiencies can be severe, for example, damage to reputation and/or market value. While there are many practitioner-led manuals and methods for dealing with 404, there has been little published in the academic research literature investigating the role of Information Systems organizations in implementing Section 404. The paper addresses this gap in knowledge. We used institutional theory as the lens through which to examine the experiences of Section 404 implementation in three global organizations. We used the case study method and an abductive strategy to gather and analyze data respectively. Our findings are summarized in six recommendations. We found that institutional pressures play a critical role in the implementation of Section 404. In particular, organizations face coercive pressure to achieve Section 404 compliance, without which punitive sanctions can be imposed by regulators. Organizations tend to imitate one another in the methods they use so that each is perceived to be in line with their competitive environment. Organizations face normative pressures to act in ways that are socially acceptable, which is to achieve compliance. Failure to do so would be a signal to the market that the organization does not take controls seriously. We expand these findings in terms of power and influence tactics that IS organizations can use when implementing Section 404. Our findings provide directions for practice and lines of enquiry for further research

Financial Structure, Informality and Development

This is a theory of total factor productivity based on measured capital market im- perfections and costs of creating and operating formal sector firms. We develop a firm dynamics model with endogenous formal and informal sectors where firms face a technol- ogy adoption opportunity. The model predicts that countries with a low degree of debt enforcement and high costs of formality are characterized by low allocative efficiency and a large share output produced by low productivity firms in the informal sector. We find that this mechanism is quantitatively important. When frictions are parameterized using the World Bank Doing Business database, the model explains up to 60% of total factor productivity differences between the US and developing economies.Financial Structure, Informal Sector, Productivity, Policy Distortions

An Analysis of Service Ontologies

Services are increasingly shaping the world’s economic activity. Service provision and consumption have been profiting from advances in ICT, but the decentralization and heterogeneity of the involved service entities still pose engineering challenges. One of these challenges is to achieve semantic interoperability among these autonomous entities. Semantic web technology aims at addressing this challenge on a large scale, and has matured over the last years. This is evident from the various efforts reported in the literature in which service knowledge is represented in terms of ontologies developed either in individual research projects or in standardization bodies. This paper aims at analyzing the most relevant service ontologies available today for their suitability to cope with the service semantic interoperability challenge. We take the vision of the Internet of Services (IoS) as our motivation to identify the requirements for service ontologies. We adopt a formal approach to ontology design and evaluation in our analysis. We start by defining informal competency questions derived from a motivating scenario, and we identify relevant concepts and properties in service ontologies that match the formal ontological representation of these questions. We analyze the service ontologies with our concepts and questions, so that each ontology is positioned and evaluated according to its utility. The gaps we identify as the result of our analysis provide an indication of open challenges and future work

Compliance advisory service feasibility study

This report identifies areas or methods of regulatory compliance information and advice to SMEs in the region that are inadequate or deficient. It recommends additional services that will benefit SMEs in the region taking into account the business support simplification agenda, state aid, legal liability, environmental and equality issues

Information system diffusion in organizations - a control mechanism perspective

Research streams emphasize that after the excitement of adopting a new IS innovation, most do not employ the innovation to its full potential thus creating an assimilation gap. The failure of an IS to be fully diffused in an organization are, in most cases, due to employees resisting and not accepting the implemented innovation. The analysis of control mechanisms in IS research has proved to be a valuable approach to elucidate IS implementation and success experienced by organizations. The control mechanisms can be exercised thro ugh formal and informal modes. However, control mechanism theory have not yet been adopted to examine the process of IS diffusion in organizations. Therefore, there is a need to study the ways in which implemented control mechanisms impacts on the pro cess of diffusion of a Management Information System (MIS). Cooper and Zmud (1990) six stage IS implementation model will be applied to the research to illustrate and investigate the process of diffusion of the MIS. The research method will be an in-depth case study. It is anticipated that investigating IS diffusion from the perspective of control will considerably provide fresh insights in the understanding process of IS diffusion in organizations