Umwelt, Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit : eine Standortbestimmung

1. Einleitung Bis zu Beginn der siebziger Jahre galt die Sorge um die Umweltqualität als Luxus, den sich die Entwicklungsländer schlicht und einfach nicht leisten konnten. Anlässlich der Konferenz der Vereinten Nationen in Stockholm im Jahre 1972 machte sich die indische Premierministerin Indira Gandhi zur Sprecherin zahlreicher Entwicklungsländer, indem sie erklärte : „Wie kann man von den Bewohnern der Dörfer und Slums verlangen, sie sollten etwas gegen die Verschmutzung der Luft, der Flüss..

Science-Technology-Industry Network The Competitiveness of Swiss Biotechnology: A Case Study of Innovation

This study proposes to analyse in an exploratory way the state of innovation and production systems in Swiss biotechnology and especially its innovative capacity and related factors. As biotechnology as such cannot be considered as an industrial sector but rather as a set of technologies developed in the field of life sciences, the direct link with science makes innovative capacity a major determinant of competitiveness. While large multinationals, such as biopharmaceuticals, may not need local technology suppliers, the presence of a local industry of research-based firms and technology suppliers is critical, because the industry is, by itself, a major source of growth and social progress. By observing how research and development (R&D) activities are organised in the field of biotechnology, we try to identify the relations existing between universities and the biotechnology industry, but also the relations between biotechnology firms among themselves.

Government and Growth

The relative size of the State in industrialized economies has increased dramatically during the past century giving rise to legitimate fears that such a trend might end up having an adverse impact on growth. This paper explores the relationship between the development of government activities and economic growth. It starts by evoking problems related to the measurement of the public sector before reviewing statistical evidence on the long-term growth of the share of the State in the economy. It then provides a number of explanations for this phenomenon including those pertaining to the functioning of the political system itself thereby pointing towards inefficiencies. The next step is to explore the principal avenues along which government interventions can positively or negatively interfere with the growth potential of the economy. It turns out that while public expenditures – especially those responding to market failures – tend to be favorable to growth, most taxes are growth-hindering. The final part of the paper singles out some pitfalls in the empirical investigation of this relationship. The conjecture is that the nonlinear and possibly endogenous nature of the hypothesized nexus can explain the lack of consensus in empirical studies conducted so far

Fiscalité, q de Tobin et investissement privé en Suisse

This article is an attempt to elaborate a model relating Tobbin's q corrected for taxes to the rate of capital accumulation in order to evaluate the impact of fiscal incentives on corporate investment expenditure in Switzerland. The estimation of the model on the basis of post-war data reveals that taxation has so far played only a minor role in the investment process in Switzerland. Moreover, the simulation of the model under various hypotheses of fiscal reform shows that while the traditional instruments, namely the manipulation of corporate tax rates and fiscal depreciation schemes tend to have a relatively small impact, the use of the investment tax credit, not yet implemented in Switzerland, can be a rather efficient means of influencing business investment.

L'imposition des revenus du capital en Suisse: Une approche de simulation

None