The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary

Reviewed Book: Myers, Allen C. The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987

School autonomy: necessary but not sufficient

School autonomy has become increasingly significant in the politics of education, as well as a central feature of education systems’ reform policies in Australia and globally. This review examines the spectrum of evidence on the impact of school autonomy on student academic achievement, and the features of autonomy that improve or constrain achievement, and discusses the implications of these findings for future policy. There is no definitive or simple conclusion from assessing the impact of autonomy on student achievement, but neither does the evidence reject the contribution of autonomy. Rather, the evidence points to autonomy as a key and necessary component of a mature and high-performing system, as it is in other areas of public administration. However, the wider institutional context matters, and parallel policies like accountability and leadership development need to be in place. Crucially, and counter to popular conception, more rather than less systemic support is needed for the potential of school autonomy to be realised

Cross-border group-taxation and loss-offset in the EU: An analysis for CCCTB (Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base) and ETAS (European Tax Allocation System)

The European Commission proposed to replace the currently existing Separate Accounting by an EU-wide tax system based on a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). Besides the CCCTB, there is an alternative tax reform proposal, the European Tax Allocation System (ETAS). In a dynamic capital budgeting model we analyze the impacts of selected loss-offset limitations currently existing in the EU under both concepts on corporate crossborder real investments of MNE. The analyses show that replacing Separate Accounting by either concept can lead to increasing profitability due to cross-border loss compensation. However, if the profitability increases, the study indicates that the main criteria of decisions on location are the tax rate divergences within the EU Member States. High tax rate differentials in the Member States imply significant redistribution of tax payments under CCCTB and ETAS. The results clarify that in both reform proposals tax payment reallocations occur in favor of the holding. National loss-offset limitations and minimum taxation concepts in tendency lose their impact on the profitability under both proposals. However, we found scenarios in which national minimum taxation can encroach upon the group level, although in our model the minimum taxation's impacts seem to be slight. Moreover, we identify harmful paradoxes in ETAS due to the tax credit mechanism. Our results can contribute to the current discussion on corporate group tax harmonization within the EU and other economic zones, e.g. the US, and help to anticipate the tax effects of lossoffset restrictions under the respective tax systems. --Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base,corporate taxation,European Tax Allocation System,Formula Apportionment,group taxation,investment,loss carry-forward,loss-offset,minimum taxation

Deep Imaging of the Double Quasar 0957+561: New Constraints on H_0

We present new results from extremely deep, high-resolution images of the field around the double quasar QSO 0957+561. A possible gravitational arc system near the double quasar has recently been reported, which, if real, would set strong constraints on determinations of the Hubble constant from the time delay in the double quasar. We find that both the morphology and the colors of the claimed arc systems suggest that they are chance alignments of three and two different objects, and not gravitationally lensed arcs. Hence, the constraints on $H_0$-determinations from the arcs are not valid. Also, a small group of galaxies at $z=0.5$ near the line-of-sight which was required to have a very large mass in the physically interesting arc models, is most likely insignificant. From our deep images we are able to use weak lensing of faint background galaxies in the field to map the gravitational potential in the main cluster. This sets new constraints on determinations of $H_0$. We find that the Hubble constant is constrained to be less than 70km/(s Mpc), if the time delay between the two images of the QSO is equal to or larger than 1.1 years.Comment: (uuencoded and compressed postscipt including 3 figures); 14 page

The Lausanne Movement: A Range of Perspectives

This book follows the Lausanne Movement from its creation through Cape Town and beyond.https://scholar.csl.edu/edinburghcentenary/1022/thumbnail.jp