Suchergebnisse

Fiscal federalism theory seeks to establish the optimal organization of a government, confined by certain geographic boundaries. The implications of that theory for the monetary unification process are shortly inquired. The literature measuring the redistribution and stabilization effects of the tax and transfer systems in different monetary unions is surveyed. The prospects of evolution to integration models with a federalist countenance are briefly analysed and it is given special attention to the projects of creation of a European Fiscal Transfers Scheme. That mechanism would provide the European economies with some degree of stabilization in substitution for the loss of the adjustment mechanisms. However, after analysing the different proposals for the creation of such mechanism we conclude that, given the shocks persistence, they easily become redistribution mechanisms.

Tax evasion has been a common problem in some countries with damaging consequences to national budgets. It is thus important to understand what informs attitudes towards tax compliance. Trust, perceptions of fairness and corruption have consistently been found to play a crucial role in compliance behaviour. However, research findings have been inconsistent regarding the use of deterrence power to discourage tax evasion. The current study aims at examining the influence of perceived fairness and corruption plus sanctions used by authorities to enforce tax compliance attitudes with a sample of Portuguese economics and management students (N= 330). Findings suggest that trust in authorities and their capacity to deter and punish tax evaders are interrelated and that both are important in securing tax compliance. Findings are discussed in the current Portuguese context.

Over the past few years, the Gulf of Guinea has been increasing its world share of oil production. At the same time, armed robbery and piracy attacks have become a permanent threat to the maritime agents in the region. Oil theft, crew kidnapping for ransom and robbery of crew and ship valuables are the most common outcomes of successful attacks. To better understand the phenomena, a political, economic, social and environmental analysis of the region was perf or med, and a geographic information system was developed to provide a deeper analysis and understanding of the correlation between geographical and scope factors of this criminal activity, considering the period from January 2012 to May 2015. The system integrates the land and maritime boundaries, population, religion, oil/gas platforms, oil/gas fields, reported attacks on ships and spatial analysis results. Several factors are pointed out as major contributors to today's maritime criminality in the Gulf of Guinea. The geographic information system analytical outputs provide a view of the geographical concentration, trends and perceive a slow decreas ing of this threat until 2014 and a slowgrowing tendency in 2015. ; N/A

The aim of this paper is to explain private consumption as a function of income and wealth with data from European Union countries. To examine how the developments in housing and stock markets may have affected consumption behaviour, we adopt two econo- metric procedures. First, we use the Stock–Watson procedure to account for wealth effects on consumption over the long run. Second, through an error-correction model we measure wealth effects on consumption over the short run. We found significant albeit mixed values for the long-run elasticities of consumption with respect to real residential and equity prices. We also found strong evidence that consumption exhibits error-correction behaviour in the short run, with the value of the error-correction term signifying that household consumption takes several quarters to completely respond to changes in the markets.

In the last decades, the academic literature has devoted considerable attention to the determinants of export performance. In result of those research efforts in identifying and examining the influence of such determinants, the literature presents a wide set of variables associated with higher levels of exports. This paper provides a contribution to that literature by trying to evidence the impact of firm certification—namely, in terms of the firm's quality, environmental, and health and safety management systems—on export performance. The paper analyses an unbalanced sample of 1684 Portuguese industrial SMEs for the period 2010 to 2020, uses other determinants of internationalization as control variables, and explores the possibility of moderating effects on the certification–internationalization relationship. Two alternative econometric methods are employed: a random-effects model and a Tobit model. The results evidence the importance for firms, especially in the low or medium–low technology sectors, to have certain ISO certifications in order to further develop their export activities and increase their foreign acceptance, particularly in the European Union markets. Further, certification seems to reinforce the positive relation between firm size and internationalization.