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What characterizes the progress of civilization? We propose that it can be understood as expanding democratic principles in governance and economic affairs. In both cases, progress involves advance followed by retreat. Advances come from democratizing and de-concentrating privileges. This counterbalances the opposing tendency towards monopolization. A two-by-two typology of privilege identifies four distinct categories: formal (state sanctioned) vs. informal (culture-based) privileges on one axis, and efficient vs. inefficient privileges on the other. This matrix leads to a set of propositions that, taken together, should aid in understanding how to advance economic democracy and hinder concentration of economic power: 1) remove inefficient, formal privileges, 2) collect economic rents from efficient, formal privileges, and 3) recognize sovereign rights of individuals in economic activity (which leads to removing taxes on labor and savings). We define our core terms, provide examples to illustrate meaning, provide historic examples to illustrate the feasibility of our analysis, and analyze the dynamic implications of putting our propositions into action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the aggregate capital share of U.S. firms has increased, capital share at the firm‐level has decreased. This divergence is due to mega‐firms that produce a larger output share without a proportionate increase in labor compensation. We develop a model in which firms insure workers against firm‐specific shocks, with more productive firms allocating more rents to shareholders, while less productive firms endogenously exit. Increasing firm‐level risk delays exit and increases the measure of mega‐firms, raising (lowering) the aggregate (average) capital share. An increase in the level of rents magnifies this effect. We present evidence that supports this mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fisheries management must take account of environmental sustainability, economic profitability, and social benefits generated by the public resources. The traditional approach of maximum economic yield (MEY), however, is yet to consider social objectives in deriving quantitative quotes. Current MEY evaluation framework would be appropriate if the economic rent was distributed back to the public. If public resources are privatized as corporations, the rent largely flows to the owners of large capital in the fishing industry. This is in stark contrast to the aims of benefiting the community as a whole. In this short paper, we promote a socially responsible framework in decision-making of fisheries management. This approach is beyond the fleet-based MEY approach, for it incorporates fleet profitability, chain profitability, employment, environmental concerns, and broad social benefits, in strict accordance with stock sustainability. Recognizing the needs of fishers, as well as the interests of chain sectors and the broader community, is a vital part of ensuring responsible fishery management and a viable future for Australian fisheries. The established framework will provide open view scenarios and enrich the MEY approaches in fisheries management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the role of tax policy in shaping incentives for executive effort (labor supply) and rent seeking within the firm. We develop a theoretical model that distinguishes between effort and rent‐seeking responses to income taxes, and provides a framework to estimate a lower bound for the rent‐seeking response. Using executive compensation and governance data, we find that rent seeking represents an important component of the response to changes in tax rates, especially among executives in firms with the worst corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of rents and rent-seeking is highly relevant for evolutionary economics but it has received little attention. This paper surveys the recent literature on technological change, rents, and rent-seeking applied to economic development. Economic development requires developing countries to upgrade technologically while coping with pervasive rent-seeking activities. We assess these issues in turn. This paper first surveys the literature on technical learning and institutional change due to the adoption and adaptation of new technology. Next, the debate on rents and rent-seeking, especially in relation to the issue of technological change in the process of development, is presented. Finally, we assess the roles of the state in solving the critical constraints faced by firms and industries. This paper asserts that the processes of development and industrial upgrading require understanding the mechanisms of rent management—a configuration of incentives and pressures that fully correspond to the existing political, institutional, and industrial structures of a developing country. The rent management analysis emphasizes the diversity of empirical contexts across and within countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do perceived inequalities in allocation impact citizen satisfaction with state-distributed benefits in rentier societies? Resource-rich rentier regimes are widely theorized to maintain the economic and political satisfaction of subjects through wealth distribution. Yet, while qualitative research in the rentier states of the Arabian Peninsula has identified unequal distribution as a source of discontent, the relative importance of objective versus subjective factors in shaping satisfaction at the individual level has never been systematically evaluated. Here we assess the impacts of inequality on the nexus between wealth and satisfaction among citizens of the richest rentier regime in the world: the state of Qatar. Using original, nationally representative survey data, we test the effects of two separate mechanisms of unequal distribution previously identified in the literature: group-based discrimination, and variation in individual access owing to informal influence. Results show that perceptions of both group- and individual-based inequality dampen satisfaction with state-distributed benefits, irrespective of objective socioeconomic well-being. The findings demonstrate that even in the most affluent of rentier states, economic satisfaction derives not only from absolute quantities of benefits but also from subjective impressions of fairness in the distribution process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a corporate board tasked with monitoring a firm's CEO and providing incrementally decision-relevant information. The board has both compensation and non-pecuniary incentives—we label the latter board bias. Friendly boards have muted information gathering incentives, but can more effectively engage in cheap talk communication with management. As a result, the direction of the optimal board bias is determined by the CEO's initial information advantage: the board should be weakly friendly if the CEO is endowed with precise information, and weakly antagonistic (to the CEO) otherwise. Aside from assembling a friendly board, another way for shareholders to foster CEO/board communication is by granting the CEO more equity. In general, we find board friendliness and CEO equity grants to be positively associated, in equilibrium. This provides an optimal contracting rationale for an empirical regularity often interpreted as friendly boards facilitating rent extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the development of European Deposit Insurance (DI) and assess the recent development at the EU level to establish a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) in the context of a more integrated financial framework: the Banking Union (BU).Design/methodology/approach The author uses literature review and empirical evidence to analyze the dynamic interaction among European governments in an effort to attract aggressive deposits with severe repercussion for financial stability.Findings The paper argues that a liquidity providing EDIS would render regulatory subsidy and rent-seeking behavior persisting by allowing national policies to be pursued with considerable discretionary power and in the context of increasing competition for deposits. This would run contrary to the BU objectives and constitute a major failure of the program.Practical implications The findings of the study can be helpful in understanding the DI policies pursued by European governments and their implications.Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that examines the interactions among European governments in pursuing DI policies and assesses the implications of EDIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR), but few have focused on the implications of business groups for CSR. We examine the antecedents and outcomes of CSR behaviors of group firms in Korea. We find that group affiliation is associated with higher CSR overall and for its major societal and environmental components. However, the ownership disparity between cash flow and control by controlling inside shareholders is associated with lower CSR, consistent with opportunistic rent expropriation theory. We further find that CSR initiatives can impact group firms positively in the event of bad events, consistent with insurance theory. This motive for CSR as a means of enhancing reputation capital to buffer the bad events is pronounced for group firms because of group-wide dissemination of negative reputational externality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We use competition-and-growth methodology to study rent-seeking in development. • Rents, or mark-up, harm productivity growth. Poor countries, and countries with worse institutions, are especially affected. • Tariffs fall more slowly when mark-ups are high, suggesting wasteful rent-seeking. • We conclude that rents are indicative of a broadly unhealthy business environment. Abstract Are rents, or excess profits, good for development? Rents could induce firms to lobby or bribe governments to preserve the status quo; on the other hand, rents may promote growth by giving firms the needed funds to make investments in fixed capital or research and development. To test this question empirically, we use a panel of manufacturing data at the industry-country-year level, and measure rents by the mark-up ratio. We find that the relationship between rents and growth is strongly negative, with the results being primarily driven by the poorer countries (or those with worse institutions) in the sample. This result holds when we instrument for mark-up using the average mark-up in other industries in the country. Even in industries with high external financing needs and countries with less developed financial sectors, precisely the places where excess profits could be used to drive growth, we find that rents are especially harmful. Consistent with the rent-seeking mechanism we highlight, we find that high rents are associated with a slower reduction in tariffs. We also test for the most likely alternative mechanism, that higher rents cause slower growth through the channel of allowing managerial slack. We find that controlling for management has little impact on our estimate of the impact of mark-up on productivity growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide an explanation for hedging as a means of allocating rather than reducing risk. We argue that when increases in total risk are costly, firms optimally allocate risk by reducing (increasing) exposure to risks that provide zero (positive) economic rents. Our evidence shows that mutual thrifts that convert to stock institutions increase total risk following conversion, consistent with their increased abilities and incentives for risk taking. They achieve this increase by hedging interest-rate risk and increasing credit risk. We provide some evidence that risk-management activities are related to growth capacity and management compensation structure attained at conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the incentives of large shareholders to monitor public corporations. We investigate the hypothesis that a liquid stock market reduces large shareholders' incentives to monitor because it allows them to sell their stocks more easily. Even though this is true, a liquid market also makes it less costly to hold larger stakes and easier to purchase additional shares. We show that this fact is important if monitoring is costly: market liquidity mitigates the problem that small shareholders free ride on the effort of the large shareholder. We find that liquid stock markets are beneficial because they make corporate governance more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study finds that highly leveraged firms lose substantial market share to their more conservatively financed competitors in industry downturns. Specifically, firms in the top leverage decile in industries that experience output contractions see their sales decline by 26 percent more than do firms in the bottom leverage decile. A similar decline takes place in the market value of equity. These findings are consistent with the view that the indirect costs of financial distress are significant and positive. Consistent with the theory that firms with specialized products are especially vulnerable to financial distress, we find that highly leveraged firms that engage in research and development suffer the most in economically distressed periods. We also find that the adverse consequences of leverage are more pronounced in concentrated industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two proposals are made that may facilitate the creation of derivative market instruments, such as futures contracts, cash settled based on economic indices. The first proposal concerns index number construction: indices based on infrequent measurements of nonstandardized items may control for quality change by using a hedonic repeated measures method, an index number construction method that follows individual assets or subjects through time and also takes account of measured quality variables. The second proposal is to establish markets for perpetual claims on cash flows matching indices of dividends or rents. Such markets may help us to measure the prices of the assets generating these dividends or rents even when the underlying asset prices are difficult or impossible to observe directly. A perpetual futures contract is proposed that would cash settle every day in terms of both the change in the futures price and the dividend or rent index for that day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a model with strong neoclassical microeconomic roots. Profit maximization is assumed to be management's goal with the primary external constraint being the regulator's soundness requirement. By solving the model and then determining how the balance sheet would be adjusted in response to a change in regulatory requirements, a first step in analyzing the interrelationship between profits and soundness and the influence of regulation on balance sheet decisions is provided. Section I contains a discussion of the underlying assumptions and the behavioral equations of a stylized model of the banking firm. In Section II the model is solved and the effects of changes in soundness requirements are discussed. Section III provides an analysis of how a bank's relative position in imperfect capital, loan and deposit markets influences its reaction to changes in soundness requirements. This section also provides an interpretation of what these results imply for regulatory behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional measures of interest rate risk assume that prices of financial assets and liabilities are set in perfectly competitive markets. However, evidence suggests that many retail financial markets do not follow the competitive paradigm. In this paper, we employ a general contingent claims framework to value rents earned by banks in demandable retail deposit markets. Our analysis provides a natural and economically meaningful measure of interest rate risk for these imperfectly competitive markets. Using monthly survey data on NOW accounts and MMDAs, we estimate the value of retail deposit rents and deposit durations for more than 200 commercial banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion of the Antle and Fellingham paper (henceforth AF), "Information Rents and Preferences among Information Systems in a Model of Resource Allocation," combines a description of the points raised during the conference discussion with my own elaboration and extension of those and other issues. The authors motivate their paper as an exploration of the consequences of introducing a public information system in the context of private information and resource allocation. They conclude that any change in a firm's cost system can have significant distributional consequences, and these consequences will lead to resistance by some employees, reducing the rate of adoption of new systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a model in which private information and self-interested behavior induce a socially inefficient allocation of resources, we analyze the effects of introducing a public information system. A manager of productive resources has an informational advantage over the owner of the resources, as in Antle and Eppen [1985]. In this setting, mutually beneficial production is foregone as the owner attempts to limit the manager's information rent. We consider the possibility of introducing a public information system that reduces the manager's information advantage. In particular, we describe conditions under which the social efficiency of production is enhanced or reduced by the introduction of a public information system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advance of the theory of contingent claim pricing has made it possible to model and analyze very complex financial claims. When the value of the firm can be represented as a contingent claim, then the firm's optimal financial policy can be determined with only a slight modification in standard solution techniques for contingent claims. In this paper, stochastic control theory is used to determine a dynamic investment policy for the value-maximizing firm. The value of future, stochastic economic rents (i.e., the net present value of the firm), and the firm's optimal investment policy must reflect a rational reaction on behalf of its competitors. A computationally efficient methodology is presented for solving the simultaneous investment-valuation problem for an n-firm game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms competing in multiple markets find equilibrium through spheres of influence and mutual forbearance, but imperfect competitive information may give one firm an incentive to influence rivals' behavior and uncover information. We suggest that a firm's resource allocations can divert competitors' resource allocations, enhancing the firm's own sphere of influence without precipitating a destructive all-out war. We define the stratagems thrust, feint, and gambit and conclude that corporate strategy decisions can only be imperfectly understood if competitive interaction is not taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We build on an emerging strategy literature that views the firm as a bundle of resources and capabilities, and examine conditions that contribute to the realization of sustainable economic rents. Because of (1) resource-market imperfections and (2) discretionary managerial decisions about resource development and deployment, we expect firms to differ (in and out of equilibrium) in the resources and capabilities they control. This asymmetry in turn can be a source of sustainable economic rent. The paper focuses on the linkages between the industry analysis framework, the resource-based view of the firm, behavioral decision biases and organizational implementation issues. It connects the concept of Strategic Industry Factors at the market level with the notion of Strategic Assets at the firm level. Organizational rent is shown to stem from imperfect and discretionary decisions to develop and deploy selected resources and capabilities, made by boundedly rational managers facing high uncertainty, complexity, and intrafirm conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into the impact of regulatory controls on banking market structures such as entry, mergers, and other resource allocation decisions. Conflicts between regulatory goals of failure prevention and market efficiency are outlined and the theoretical basis of banking within the theory of the firm is discussed. The author suggests the use of risk compensated rent estimation as a basis for evaluating the extent of regulatory control and alteration of otherwise normative market forces.

This study utilizes the spatial panel method to investigate the direct and spatial spillover effects of resource rents on economic complexity (ECI) based on a cross-country panel data covering 123 countries from 1995 to 2018. First, our empirical results highlight a strong clustering trend in the geographical distribution of global economic complexity. Second, we find that overall resource abundance significantly affects local ECI negatively, aligning with the resource curse hypothesis. However, the evidence remains inconclusive concerning the negative effects of overall resource abundance on the ECI of neighboring countries. Third, as for local ECI, the resource curse hypothesis holds for oil rents and mineral rents, a resource blessing emerges for gas rents. Interestingly, while oil and gas rents could significantly hinder the ECI improvement of spatially related countries, coal rents and mineral rents exhibit positive and significant spatial spillover effects. Fourth, our regional heterogeneity analysis yields very nuanced and diversified findings, notably revealing negative spatial spillover effects of oil rents for most regions except NAEU (Northern America and Europe). Conversely, underdeveloped regions like SSA (Sub-Saharan Africa) benefit from coal rents for not only their own ECI, but also their neighboring countries. Lastly, we also find that institutional quality and financial openness can mitigate the adverse impacts of resource rents on ECI. Yet, an increase in FDI inflows may exacerbate these effects. [Display omitted] • This paper aims to assess the direct and indirect effects of resource abundance on economic complexity (ECI). • The worldwide geographical distribution of ECI shows a strong clustering trend. • Overall resource abundance has significantly negative impacts on local ECI, signifying the resource curse hypothesis established on ECI. • ECI of underdeveloped regions like Sub-Saharan African benefit from their own coal rents and their neighboring countries'. • Resource curse effects could be mitigated by institutional quality and financial openness but exacerbated by increasing FDI inflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marx's theory of rent is usually regarded to be represented in the text of Part VI of Book III of Capital, which was originally a chapter in his manuscript written in 1865 on the basis of the manuscript of 1861–1863, into which the theory of rent slipped by accident in the course of its writing. The present article elucidates such particular circumstances relating to the making of Marx's theory of rent composed of two forms, differential and absolute, based on the new MEGA volumes. Special attention is paid to Liebig's agro-chemistry, which considerably influenced Marx's view on modern agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We build an on-the-house search model and show that two frequently used metrics for the housing market, the rent-to-price ratio (or rental yield) and the turnover rate, are jointly determined in equilibrium. We, therefore, estimate a simultaneous equations system on matched sale-rental pairs, as a housing unit cannot be owner-occupied and renter-occupied at the same time. We confirm that a higher turnover rate is associated with a lower rental yield. We also identify a form of “dichotomy” in empirical determinants of rental yields and turnover rates at the estate level: the demographic structure and past returns affect an estate’s turnover rate, while popularity, human capital, mortgage burdens, and long-run rent growth determine its rental yield. The robustness of our results is established through a series of tests. Our popularity index for 130 estates in Hong Kong, estate rankings, and the brand premia of major real estate developers may carry independent interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes an understudied and contested form of government taking, transfer restriction, which has supplanted expropriation as the most ubiquitous and costly type of international property rights violation. Veto-player-type constraints curtail governments’ ability to engage in outright and (nontransfer related) creeping expropriation but have little impact on their ability to generate wealth via transfer restrictions. We use a formal model to derive testable implications regarding the effect of political institutions and domestic politics on governments’ ability to collect these two types of rent. Empirically, we use novel time-series cross-sectional data to show that while veto-player-type political constraints diminish expropriation risk, transfer risk is much less affected: even constrained governments impose transfer restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the standard characterisation of the equity-efficiency trade-off as set out in this symposium by Joe Heath overstates the tension between these two values. The reason lies in the fact that economists tend to take individual labour supply preferences as given, which leads to a superficial analysis of the concepts of reservation wage and of economic rent. The paper suggests that we should instead think of reservation wages as variable and as influenced by social norms. Social norms play a double role in this context. First, they represent a constitutive element of market competition; second, they can be a determinant of income inequalities. From this perspective, a certain share of high reservation wages sustained by contingent inegalitarian social norms should count as economic rent. The last section of the paper strengthens this conclusion further by drawing a parallel between expensive tastes in consumption and a certain class of high reservation wages. To the extent that the latter are underpinned by social norms rather than efficiency considerations, not paying them is both just and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than answering the broad question, 'What is a just income?', in this essay I consider one component of income--economic rent--under one understanding of justice--as giving people what they deserve. As it turns out, the answer to this more focused question is 'no'. People do not deserve their economic rents, and there is no bar of justice to their confiscation. After briefly covering the concept of desert and explaining what economic rents are, I analyze six types of rent and show that each is unjustified from the point of view of desert. I conclude by drawing some political and economic lessons from the preceding analysis, and by describing how these considerations can create a more just and efficient economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este trabajo analiza si las rentas económicas que los auditores obtienen de sus clientes por la prestación de servicios de auditoría afectan a la independencia de auditor. La independencia del auditor ha sido subrogada a través de la propensión a emitir informes de auditoría cualificados por gestión continuada para una muestra de empresas españolas cotizadas que presentan síntomas de deterioro financiero durante el periodo 2002-2010. Para captar el efecto de las rentas económicas se han tenido en cuenta tres dimensiones de la dependencia económica: el nivel de honorarios de auditoría en términos absolutos, el nivel de honorarios relativos percibidos de un cliente y el nivel de honorarios futuros esperados. Los resultados muestran que ninguna de las dimensiones tiene efecto sobre la decisión del auditor de emitir una opinión cualificada por gestión continuada, cuestionando la idea subyacente en algunas de las medidas de salvaguarda propuestas por el regulador de que elevados honorarios de auditoría comprometen la independencia del auditor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide further evidence on the role of mutual funds in China using the split share structure reform as an experiment. We find no supportive evidence for the political pressure hypothesis of Firth et al. (2010), but provide a set of unique results that are consistent with rent‐seeking behaviour by mutual funds. In addition, fund‐level governance can weaken the negative relationship between compensation ratio and fund ownership. Finally, we document a specific form of private benefits that can contribute to rent‐seeking behaviour by mutual funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trademark law has de-evolved. It has transitioned from an efficient mechanism for ensuring competition into an inefficient regime for capturing economic rents. In this Article, I focus on the role that party self-interest has played in biasing the evolution of trademark law. This self-interest tends to lead parties to (1) challenge efficient legal rules and seek to replace them with inefficient, anticompetitive rules, and (2) accede to inefficient, anticompetitive rules once they are in place. Almost by definition, when a rule of trademark law promotes competition, it reduces the market surplus or rents that current producers capture. As a result, parties will seldom spend resources either to defend an efficient trademark rule or to challenge an inefficient trademark rule in the hope of replacing it with a more efficient rule. Instead, inefficient trademark rules offer a party, usually the trademark owner, the opportunity to capture rents. As a result, at least one party will have a correspondingly strong interest in defending such inefficient trademark rules or, if necessary, challenging efficient trademark rules in the hope of replacing them with inefficient trademark rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia provides one of the clearest examples of a 'developmental state' in Africa. Drawing on a deeply entrenched experience of statehood, the present Ethiopian regime has embarked on an ambitious programme, depending on the central capture of 'rents', to fund a massive expansion especially in communications, education, and hydroelectricity. High initial rates of growth have been achieved. However, the political setting is tightly constrained and the state has not allowed the private sector freedom of action to generate the required levels of production. Ultimate success will depend on the capacity to transform a state that has itself been central to the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a two-stage sequential-move model of location and pricing to identify firm’s location, output, and welfare. We consider two pricing regimes (mill pricing and spatial price discrimination) and, unlike previous literature, allow in each of them for a non-uniform population density, non-constant location costs (i.e., the setup costs, such rental costs and land prices, differ by firm’s location), and endogenous market boundaries. Under constant location costs, our results show the firm locates at the city center under both mill and discriminatory pricing, and that output is larger under spatial price discrimination. Welfare comparisons are, however, ambiguous. Under non-constant location costs, we find the optimal location can move away from the city center, and does not coincide across pricing regimes. Compared with mill pricing, spatial price discrimination generates a higher level of output. We also find that welfare is higher (lower) under mill than under discriminatory pricing when transportation rates are low (high, respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys and evaluates the corporation tax systems of the Member States of the European Union on the basis of a comprehensive taxonomy of actual and potential regimes, which have as their base either profits; profits, interest and royalties; or economic rents. The current regimes give rise to various instate and interstate spillovers, which violate the basic tenets—neutrality and subsidiarity—of the single market. The trade-offs between the implications of these tenets—harmonization and diversity, respectively—can be reconciled by a bottom-up strategy of strengthening source-based taxation and narrowing differences in tax rates. The strategy starts with dual income taxation, proceeds with final source withholding taxes and rate coordination, and is made complete by comprehensive business income taxation. Common base and cash flow taxation are not favored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do gangs proliferate during democratization and decline in number during authoritarian consolidation? I utilize primary evidence of two Indonesian gangs to inform a model of protection gangs under varying states of political development. Modeling gangs as territorial firms under different regulatory conditions, I attribute their number and political affiliation to the interaction between state capacity and political fragmentation. In weak states, gangs will lack political affiliations and their number will be determined by the scalability of their coercive capacities. In countries where states have the capacity to significantly constrain gangs, but lack significant costs for politicians to associate with them, gangs will seek political affiliation, trading coercive services for lax law enforcement. In such contexts, their number will be determined by state factionalization. Thus, gangs proliferate during democratization due to more political actors sharing state control. I assess the theory examining Indonesia’s history of statebuilding and political transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing theories of the rentier state are essentially static, but rentier states are not monolithic and unchanging; most have economies built on the extraction of non-renewable resources, and at some point those resources will be exhausted. What happens then? In this paper, I argue that the case of Nauru may provide some guideposts. The existing concept of the rentier state is actually one component of a larger temporal typology. Rentier states can, and most will, eventually become post-rentier states. Post-rentier states have exhausted the resource wealth that formerly financed the state, and because of the perverse incentives of rentierism are ill equipped to function in the modern world economy. The paper concludes by outlining a dynamic theory of the rentier state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reflects on issues surrounding the high rent problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic profit could be influenced by economic rents. However natural resource rents provided different impact on the economic growth or economic profit. The main focus of the study was to evaluate the economic growth as function of natural resource rents. For such a purpose machine learning approach, artificial neural network, was used. The used natural resource rents were coal rents, forest rents, mineral rents, natural gas rents and oil rents. Based on the results it is concluded that the machine learning approach could be used as the tool for the economic growth evaluation as function of natural resource rents. Moreover the more advanced approaches should be incorporated to improve more the forecasting accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)