This paper uses survey data from Iceland on 884 firms to test for the theory of customer markets proposed by Phelps and Winter (1970) and Okun (1981). The results provide support for the customer market theory in that managers agree that customers are valuable to firms – they rank them second...

A medium-term relationship exists between share prices, normalised by labour productivity, and the rate of unemployment in the OECD countries. A similar relationship appears to exist between unemployment and house prices. This helps explain decadal changes in mean unemployment, such as the shift...

This paper provides an explanation for the observed positive relationship between youth unemployment and the cost of firing workers. When the cost of firing workers is high, firms only fire when the present discounted value of future losses is high, in which case they gain little by postponing...

The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First we show how to estimate the volatility of high frequency log-returns where the estimates are not affected by microstructure noise and the presence of Lévy-type jumps in prices. The second contribution focuses on the relationship between the...

In this paper we explore the information content of a large set of fiscal indicators for US real output growth and inflation. We provide evidence that fluctuations in certain fiscal variables contain valuable information to predict fluctuations in output and prices. The distinction between...

This paper assesses the role of distance in professional team sports, taking the example of football (soccer). We argue that a team’s performance in terms of scored and conceded goals decreases with the distance to the foreign playing venue. To test this hypothesis empirically, we investigate...

This paper considers the micro- and macro-economic benefits and costs of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and some implications of implementing new international accounting standards IFRIC 12. If public sector financial costs are forced to move ‘on balance sheet’ then there are likely to...

Firms' tax planning decisions, similar to their other operational decisions, are made in a competitive environment. Various stakeholders observe the tax payments and evaluate these against the relevant peer group, which creates interdependencies in the tax planning activities of firms....

This paper analyzes the relationship between corporate taxation, firm age and debt. We adapt a standard model of capital structure choice under corporate taxation, focusing on the financing and investment decisions a firm is typically faced with. Our model suggests that the debt ratio is...

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird untersucht, ob sich ein internationales Vorgehen gegen Steueroasen rechtfertigen lässt und welche Instrumente dabei gewählt werden sollen. Es wird argumentiert, dass durch die Ausklammerung der Unternehmensbesteuerung aus den OECD Maßnahmen gegen Steueroasen...