General Continuum Clockwork

The continuum clockwork is an extra-dimensional set-up to realize certain features of the clockwork mechanism generating exponentially suppressed or hierarchical couplings of light particles. We study the continuum clockwork in a general scheme in which large volume, warped geometry, and localization of zero modes in extra dimension are described by independent parameters. For this, we propose a generalized 5-dimensional linear dilaton model which can realize such set-up as a solution of the model, and examine the KK spectrum and the couplings of zero modes and massive KK modes to boundary-localized operators for the bulk graviton, Abelian gauge bosons and periodic scalar fields. We discuss how those KK spectra and couplings vary as a function of the volume, warping and localization parameters, and highlight the behavior in the parameter region corresponding to the clockwork limit. We discuss also the field range of 4-dimensional axions originating from either 5-dimensional periodic scalar field or the 5-th component of an Abelian gauge field, and comment on the limitations of continuum clockwork compared to the discrete clockwork.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figures; v3: minor changes, references updated, version published in JHE

The Study On The Effect And Determinants Of Small - And Medium-Sized Entities Conducting Tax Avoidance

SME often lack the capacity to keep transparency in management due to a small number of information users. Thus, the adoption of K-IFRS can be burdensome to numerous SME, which led to the enactment of Accounting Standards for Small- and Medium-sized Entities (AS-SME). AS-SME allows the accountants to easily implement accounting rules when writing financial statements and the users to comprehend useful information. SME hold less tax burden since they receive a tax deduction and exemption from the Tax Act. Thus, we conjecture that the financial determinants of tax avoidance between SME and non-SME will differ. We divide the total sample according to the corporate tax avoidance and empirically examine whether the difference actually exists. Our sample consists 18,954 audited firms including those external audited from 2011 to 2013. This study implements BTD, the difference between accounting profit and taxable income and estimated corporate tax avoidance (TS), which is the part that cannot be explained by total accruals in BTD to proxy for tax avoidance. (Desai and Dharmapala 2006). We summarize our findings as below: there is a significant distinction between SME and non-SME regarding the related financial determinants. The result shows that firm size (SIZE), profitability (ROA), leverage (LEV), operating cash flow(CFO), capital intensity (PPE), R&D intensity (RNDS), and growth rate (GS) all influence the corporate tax avoidance of SME. Our result also suggests that there is variation in the determinants among the SME with high corporate tax avoidance. The attempt to investigate the financial determinants of the tax avoidance in SME can be a barometer of the effectiveness of AS-SME, which is enacted to lessen the tax burden of the SME. We intend to provide policy implication regarding SME subsidy by examining the motive for corporate tax avoidance in SME

Reported Profits And Effective Tax Rate Following Accounting Standards Changes Analysis Of Consolidated Financial Statements And Separate Financial Statements

This study empirically examines how the adoption of IFRS affected the reported profits and effective tax rates of firms by analyzing consolidated financial statements and separate financial statements. Firms that adopted IFRS in 2011 were required to disclose consolidated financial statements and separate financial statements in both K-IFRS and K-GAAP for this period. We conjecture that there will be a difference in the reported profits and effective tax rates between the financial statements that adopt the two different accounting standards. This study will provide policy implications with regards to the recent IFRS adoption and the use of accounting standards. The findings of this study are as follows. First, we find that the effective tax rate and corporate tax expenses decreased after the adoption of K-IFRS from K-GAAP. Earnings Before Tax (EBT) and net income also decreased when reported in K-IFRS. When we divide the total sample into the listed firms and KOSDAQ firms, we found a significant difference between the accounting standards in the total sample and listed firms, but did not see such a difference in KOSDAQ firms. In addition, results from the analysis of separate financial statements were analogous to those from consolidated financial statements. Additional analyses examined the effect of the early adoption of IFRS, but a significant influence due to early adoption was not found in consolidated financial statements from both parametric and non-parametric tests. However, the effective tax rate did decrease in the separate financial statements of firms that adopted K-IFRS earlier. The implementation of K-IFRS (changes in accounting standards) has made the managerial performance of firms accounted for in the Equity Method to be reflected in EBT and net income. This entailed an increase (or decrease) in the Equity Method profit, which in turn increased reported profits and decreased effective tax rates. In other words, the total increase of reported profits in consolidated financial statements can be attributed to subsidiary companies. However, the adoption of IFRS also reduced the tax burden, which is considered to be the motivation for firms to adopt IFRS in advance. This article attempts to provide policy implications with regards to the adoption of new accounting standards and its influence on the corporate tax expenses and effective tax rates in listed firms and KOSDAQ firms. &nbsp

Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN)

We describe the overall characteristics and the performance of an optical CCD camera system, Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN), which is being used at the 2.1 m Otto Struve Telescope of the McDonald Observatory since 2010 August. CQUEAN was developed for follow-up imaging observations of red sources such as high redshift quasar candidates (z >= 5), Gamma Ray Bursts, brown dwarfs, and young stellar objects. For efficient observations of the red objects, CQUEAN has a science camera with a deep depletion CCD chip which boasts a higher quantum efficiency at 0.7 - 1.1 um than conventional CCD chips. The camera was developed in a short time scale (~ one year), and has been working reliably. By employing an auto-guiding system and a focal reducer to enhance the field of view on the classical Cassegrain focus, we achieve a stable guiding in 20 minute exposures, an imaging quality with FWHM >= 0.6" over the whole field (4.8' * 4.8'), and a limiting magnitude of z = 23.4 AB mag at 5-sigma with one hour total integration time.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. 26 pages including 5 tables and 24 figure

Fair Value Accounting And Financial Stability – Based On The Adoption

Fair value accounting refers to the accounting method which an asset or liability is estimated based on the current market price, so called fair value. Under the fair value accounting, it is more difficult for managers to hide bad information, because the value of an asset or liabilities is re-estimated periodically to reflect the changes in fair value in the market. In this case, firms’ financial stability will be increased. On the other hand, fair value accounting can intensity the volatility of the numbers in the financial statement, which leads to decreases the financial stability. This papers empirically examines the effect of the fair value accounting on the financial stability based on the IFRS adoption in Korea. Using the non-financial firms listed in KOSPI and KOSDAQ from 2000 to 2013, we find that the expansion of fair value accounting increases financial stability. The results support the argument that fair value accounting prohibits managers from hiding bad information, rather it enforces the disclosure of value-relevant information to the investors. The results are consistent with a battery of robustness checks. Thus, the overall results show that the expansion of fair value accounting increase financial stability.

Recent Progress in the Physics of Axions and Axion-Like Particles

The axion is a light pseudoscalar particle postulated to solve issues with the Standard Model, including the strong CP problem and the origin of dark matter. In recent years, there has been remarkable progress in the physics of axions in several directions. An unusual type of axion-like particle termed the relaxion was proposed as a new solution to the weak scale hierarchy problem. There are also new ideas for laboratory, astrophysical, or cosmological searches for axions; such searches can probe a wide range of model parameters that were previously inaccessible. On the formal theory side, the weak gravity conjecture indicates a tension between quantum gravity and a trans-Planckian axion field excursion. Many of these developments involve axions with hierarchical couplings. In this article, we review recent progress in axion physics, with particular attention paid to hierarchies between axion couplings. We emphasize that the parameter regions of hierarchical axion couplings are the most accessible experimentally. Moreover, such regions are often where important theoretical questions in the field are addressed, and they can result from simple model-building mechanisms.Comment: 1+35 pages, 4 figures; invited review published in Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science; v3: sign errors in Eq. (2.26) corrected, various minor change