Emotional characters for automatic plot creation

The Virtual Storyteller is a multi-agent framework for automatic story generation. In this paper we describe how plots emerge from the actions of semi-autonomous character agents, focusing on the influence of the characters’ emotions on plot development

The Corporate Income Tax: international trends and options for fundamental reform

This paper discusses the future of the corporate income tax in an integrating world economy. The first part of the paper reviews some important trends in corporate taxation across the OECD area. The second part discusses the role of the corporation tax, laying out guidelines for corporate tax reform and considering some alternatives to existing corporate income taxes. In discussing options for fundamental reform, two sets of concerns are addressed. The first represents the traditional aims of a tax on corporate income. Essentially the traditional aim has been to design a tax system which raises revenue as efficiently as possible - that is, which minimises distortions to the location and scale of investment, to the sources and uses of finance, and to the choice of legal form. These distortions have been the subject of study for many years, and many proposals for reform have been made. One of the most popular and enduring ideas has been to tax only economic rent: in a traditional framework such a tax would not be expected to have any effect on investment or financing decisions.There is also a second set of concerns. Part of this concern has also been the subject of study for many years - the relationship between the personal and corporate sectors, and in particular, the possibility of tax avoidance by shifting income between the two sectors.world economy, corporate income tax, corporation tax, corporate tax reform, alternatives, distortions, economic rent, tax avoidance, Devereux, Birch Sørensen

Omineca Herald, October, 30, 1923

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The instrument of authority: The Niger river as propaganda in Northern Nigeria, 1900-1905

This paper discusses the ways in which Frederick Lugard used the Niger river and her subsidiaries as a tool to secure funding from Great Britain between 1900-1905. The annual reports written by Lugard were propaganda to convince Parliament of the value of the Nigerian project by showing progress towards the installation of “legitimate commerce”. This paper proves that the British were, especially in these early years of colonisation, to a great degree confined to the Niger river. Three cases are analysed to show to what extent Lugard is bound to the river for his propaganda: the abolition of illegitimate trade, the promotion of Nigeria to replace the USA and India as the new centre for cotton farming, and the redirection of commerce from the trans-Saharan route to the English sphere. This paper concludes that the river held an abstract value for the British coloniser: apart from being the major highway for trade and transport, it was also an important tool for Lugard’s propaganda

Prices of French Icon Wines and the Business Cycle: Empirical Evidence from Danish Wine Auctions

During the last decades auctions of selected wines have regularly taken place in Denmark. Therefore, by now, a considerable amount of data exists for auction wine prices, i.e. both the assessed wine prices of the auctioneer and the eventual price at which the wines are sold. From these data the prices of the most famous French icon wines (Premier Cru Classé) are extracted and a coherent time series data set is constructed. As the auctions have taken place several times each year, the data are analysed at a quarterly frequency. Having obtained the time series data for the price development of icon wines, these are expected to be influenced by a lot of factors, of course, but the income development as reflected in the business cycle fluctuations is considered to be of utmost importance. The wine auction prices are obviously exogenous to the business cycle, and thus eventual questions of causality are easier tested than usually done with many economic variables. Hence, the empirical part of the paper analyses the co-movements in the wine prices and the business cycle, the latter represented by several indicators in order to address the question of whether the wine auctions are affected by the general economic development or not. The major conclusions seem to be that the auctioneers valuation of icon wines may follow the international prices of these goods - and the prices of substitutes as represented by the stock market index - but in contrast to this, in recent years the actual hammer prices are stagnating and deviating from the path of the wine price valuations.Wine auction prices, French icon wines, Business cycles