Suchergebnisse

Globalisation, in particular the increasing multinationalisation of businesses, has forced government suppliers into direct (in the form of parallel governments) or indirect (in the form of free trade) competition. However, the growth of supranational organisations such as the EU threatens the power of exit which is so vital to competition: overlapping government functions create waste and encourage further the growth of centralisation.

The international tax regime appears to be a weak system of global governance on the surface; however, I find that this system remains effective. This governance structure is built upon the thousands of tax treaties that function as policy instruments for advancing the implementation of global tax policy. Yet there is conflicting evidence in relation to the efficacy of these treaties, necessitating further exploration. In this article, I offer an accessible introduction to some of the key dynamics of the international tax regime and, in doing so, systematically address whether tax treaties may have the capacity to spur cross-border investment in securities. Using augmented gravity models, I find strong empirical evidence in favor of my theory that tax treaties function as credible commitments to international tax norms, potentially increasing portfolio holdings of some foreign securities. My findings should be of significant importance to scholars of international organizations, global governance, and international tax policy.

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) is a key multilateral organisation for development. Since 2015, DESA has had the unique mandate of facilitating the efforts of all UN member states towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by supporting the High-level Political Forum. It is tasked to provide intellectual leadership through research and analysis, support norm-setting by the main UN bodies on development – the General Assembly (GA), the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) – and coord¬inate with the broader UN development system.However, DESA has yet to unlock its full potential in playing a politically relevant and analytically authoritative role in sustainable development beyond the conference rooms of New York. DESA's organisational structures have become increasingly outdated and inefficient. Since the founding of DESA in 1997, the department has been curiously exempt from the ongoing reforms of the world organisation. In addition, there is little transparency and analysis of actual reform needs and options.Our reform vision is that DESA should become a more prominent voice of the UN in sustainable development and help to credibly raise ambitions for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda globally. Tasked with economic and social affairs, DESA could serve as the multilateral hub for advancing universality, assisting all countries (including high-income countries) in striving for sustainable devel¬op¬ment and coordinating global policies towards advancing the global common good. This vision calls for a department that is intellectually brilliant, politically capable and impartial in bringing together the whole UN system.As a basic condition, DESA reform requires vigorous and consistent support from member states. The power of the Secretary-General (SG) and his heads of department to reorganise the structures are limited by member states' oversight, which is mainly executed in the UN's budgetary bodies. Moreover, DESA's substructures have expanded organically around mandated tasks, creating a highly decentralised entity with various overlapping activities, thereby raising the stakes of reform.The most recent reform attempts of DESA have stag¬nated in a geopolitical climate of mistrust and opposing priorities along the divisions between countries from the political North and South. DESA has been the home base of developing countries – organised as the Group of 77 and China (G77) – at the UN Secretariat, making it an advocate of developing-country interests. Since 2015, several countries from the political North (e.g. United States and EU countries) have called for DESA reform in terms of increasing effectiveness and efficiency, while the G77 has pushed back, suspecting attempts to diminish their power by cutting funding and staff. The situation has become increasingly complex, with growing speculation on the intentions of China, whose diplomats have been leading the department for the last decade.In order to prepare the ground for a comprehensive DESA reform that is beneficial to all stakeholders, we suggest three steps to the SG and his reform team that build upon each other:create greater transparency, substantive knowledge and participation on DESA reforminterlink DESA reform with ongoing UN reform processesgenerate political support from member states and long-term payoffs from DESA reform.

That the Arctic is undergoing transformative changes driven in large part by external forces is no longer news. The high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, which are not themselves significant sources of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) or short-lived climate pollutants (such as black carbon soot), are experiencing effects attributable to climate change that are equal to or greater than those occurring in any of the planet's other large regions. Prominent among these effects are rising surface temperatures, a deepening of the active layer of the permafrost, the collapse of sea ice, increases in the intensity of coastal storm surges made possible by the retreat of sea ice, the accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the acidification of marine systems. The deposition of black carbon in the high north alone—almost 60 percent of which is thought to originate in Europe—appears to account for half or more of the increase in temperature occurring in the Arctic. Positive feedback processes, such as lowered albedo (that is, the capacity of Earth's surface to reflect incoming solar radiation back into space) following the melting of ice at sea and snow on land, have the effect of magnifying the impact of these external forces. Nowhere is the challenge of adapting to the impacts of climate change more urgent than in Arctic coastal communities confronted with the need to relocate to avoid physical destruction. And nowhere are the threats to individual species (for example, the polar bear) and whole ecosystems more severe than they are in the Arctic, where biophysical changes are outstripping the capacity of plants and animals to adapt to altered conditions.