Ownership Restrictions, Tax Competition and Transfer Pricing Policy

This paper analyzes tax/subsidy competition and transfer pricing regulation between governments involved in trade through a multinational firm and a joint venture using an input provided by the former.The paper takes into account the fact that in absence of bargaining, any model of such JV is discontinuous in the ownership distribution in that for di erent ownership distributions, control is either fully held by one party, or no party in particular.The paper therefore model control problems that are inherent to JVs without strongly dominant shareholder and provides along the way a rationale for indigenization policies that restrict foreign ownership.ownership;taxation;competition;price policy;control

Imam Al-Ghazali's views on economic activities

The failure of the different regulatory measures to prevent the frequent occurrence of scandals in the marketplace is proof that ethics is an essential element in all spheres of life. This paper investigates Imam al-Ghazali's views on economic activities with emphasis on the ethical aspects. As a starting point, he considers maal (wealth) as a mere means, hence its status is function of the motive for its acquisition, the way to acquire it and the way to spend it. The most common way of acquiring maal is through economic activities (kasb) that al-Ghazali thoroughly discusses in one of the chapters in his book Ihya. To al-Ghazali economic activities could be a means to attain the highest level of "al-muqarrabun" if they are carried out within a normative framework that he outlined with some details. In line with one of his favorite argument, al-Ghazali opines that the first step in the right direction is to have a correct conception of the reality of this world (a journey to the Hereafter), then maal as well as the economic activities will be conceived and dealt with in a right manner to attain eternal happiness (saadah).Al-Ghazali; Ethics; Economic activities

The remedy may be worse than the disease; a critical account of The Code of Conduct

The Code of Conduct for business taxation may, diametrically opposed to its intention, aggravate tax competition between EU Member States. The reason is that it induces, by restricting harmful tax practices, cuts in generic tax rates that may reduce tax revenue even further. If one presupposes a benevolent utility maximising government, then this worsens the underprovision of public goods. We show within a standard tax competition framework that this scenario is more likely to unfold with a higher upper bound for nondistortionary taxes, a higher responsiveness of mobile capital to tax rate differentials, and a smaller endowment of internationally mobile capital.

Information, competition and (In) complete discrimination

Nous considérons une firme qui génère un risque pour l'environnement via son activité industrielle et qui a une information privée à la fois sur son effort de précaution et sur le montant de ses actifs. Nous étudions l'interaction entre l'audit ex ante de l'effort de précaution par un régulateur et la vérification ex post de la capacité financière par un juge en cas d'accident. Du point de vue des incitations, les deux instruments sont utiles. Le policy-mix optimal dépend de la règle gouvernant l'intervention ex post et de l'efficience de l'intervention ex ante.

The Dilemma of Tax Competition: How (not) to attract (Inefficient) Firms?

We consider a tax competition game between asymmetrically un-informed governments. Two governments simultaneously propose tax arrangements to attract a multinational firm (MNF) which has an ex-ante preference to operate in both countries, and governments anticipate that once the MNF accepts their offer, each host will know the marginal cost of local production, but not the marginal cost in the other country. We show that when the multinational prefers to operate in both countries or not operate at all, then the tax competition game features two equilibria. In one equilibrium, efficient MNFs are attracted in the two countries, while in the other equilibrium, inefficient MNFs are attracted. The equilibrium in which only efficient firms are attracted may occur as the unique outcome if the MNFs can ultimately decide to settle in one country only. Our results suggest that, the existence of (small) countries who are aggressive in attracting MNFs by offering substantial tax advantages allows competing governments to keep inefficient firms away from their territories.Common Agency;Adverse Selection;tax competition;Multinationals

Competition, Incomplete Discrimination and Versioning

Producers of software viewers commonly other basic versions of their products for free while more sophisticated versions are highly priced, thereby providing less attractive or lower valuations consumers with larger utility levels.We give some foundations to this outcome called versioning.We consider a duopoly in which firms other di erentiated goods to a representative consumer; the buyer has distinct marginal valuations for the quality of the products; each producer perfectly knows the consumers taste for its own product, but remains uninformed about its taste for the rivals product.When each product cannot be purchased in isolation of the other one, a phenomenon of endogenous preferences arises since a firms o er to the consumer depends on the information unknown by the rival firm.Multiple equilibria emerge and the consumers rent increases with his valuation for one product and decreases with the valuation for the other product.By contrast, when each product can be purchased in isolation of the other one, at the unique equilibrium consumers with larger valuations for a product earn higher rents.The analysis is undertaken under two alternative pricing policies: in the partially-discriminatory case, producers make use of the known information only; in the fully-discriminatory case, each producer second-degree price discriminates the consumer according to the unknown information.We show that, sometimes, firms prefer partial to full discrimination, i.e., strategic ignorance of consumers tastes for the rival brand softens competition.competition;prices

Cost Allocation as a Coordination Mechanism

This paper shows that cost allocation can endogenously arise as a coordination mechanism in a decentralized firm.This result is derived in a setting with multiple (internally supplied) resources shared by multiple users, which constitutes a departure from previous literature.While standard cost allocation procedures use one allocation base, the optimal cost allocation mechanism derived here can select many allocation bases, therefore providing support for the use of Activity Based Costing.Like the cost allocation itself, the selection of allocation bases also arises endogenously.

Ownership Restrictions, Tax Competition and Transfer Pricing Policy

This paper analyzes tax/subsidy competition and transfer pricing regulation between governments involved in trade through a multinational firm and a joint venture using an input provided by the former.The paper takes into account the fact that in absence of bargaining, any model of such JV is discontinuous in the ownership distribution in that for di erent ownership distributions, control is either fully held by one party, or no party in particular.The paper therefore model control problems that are inherent to JVs without strongly dominant shareholder and provides along the way a rationale for indigenization policies that restrict foreign ownership.