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Developing countries employ tax incentives in the hope of attracting investors, but questions remain on the effects of these policies. Asking whether tax incentives undermine or facilitate development, this paper investigates tax rates and tax holidays in terms of both economic and social impacts in developing countries 1985-2014 in the largest panel data set ever deployed for this purpose. The collection of new data results in three major contributions to the existing literature. First, the analysis shows that the use of tax holidays has increased over the last decade throughout all four regions surveyed: Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Second, the analysis finds that the effect of tax holidays on FDI is negligible and decreasing, and importantly, that it does not translate into neither real capital accumulation nor economic growth. Third, the paper then investigates how the revenue losses from tax incentives can mean real differences for human development by analyzing the effect on tax revenues, spending, health and education outcomes. The paper concludes that tax holidays are negatively correlated with tax revenues, and as revenues decrease, the spending on education decreases. This has real effects, as evidenced by a significant negative correlation with enrollment in primary education. The analysis concludes that tax holidays overall have more negative than positive impacts on sustainable development.

The stock exchange, as one of the most important and critical economic centers, plays a significant role in sustainable economic development by attracting and properly directing the investment and liquidity of various groups of the society. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of dividend payments on the economic value added of companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange. In this research, the statistical population includes all 444 accepted companies in the stock exchange. By examining the financial statements, applying the necessary constraints and performing random sampling, 115 qualified companies were finally extracted. The Cochran formula method was used for sampling. In this study, after collecting the necessary information, the dividend and economic value added of the sample companies were calculated. The relationship between the study variables was measured using Pearson correlation coefficient. The tests and analyzes show that there is a positive correlation coefficient between the dividend and the dependent variable of economic value added in the capital market of Iran.