infonet-economy

More than ever, firms need to know how they impact on society, our values and our ways of living. In a world of high uncertainty, it is necessary to develop a sense of what really makes an organization valueable to the people. In research, the notion of Public Value addresses this type of value creation. It is about a firm's contribution to the common good as perceived by the…

This study examines whether the adoption of International Accounting Standards and International Financial Reporting Standards by German firms in 2005 improved earnings' predictive power with regard to forecasting future operating cash flow. We consider earnings' predictive power as one dimension of accounting quality. We use a data sample of German DAX and MDAX firms…

Many European countries, including Switzerland, share deep suspicions about the broad commercial application of Genetically Modified Plants (GMP) in agriculture. Research in GMP, however, is mostly welcome. In Switzerland, nevertheless, an overprotective legal framework against risks of GMP results in regulatory spillovers for research. This article explores how such expanded legal…

The Lugano Convention is a set of rules, enacted to facilitate the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments within the European Union and states outside of the EU, namely three members of the European Free Trade Association (Switzerland, Norway and Iceland). This article briefly describes the Swiss perspective, explaining the Swiss legislation relevant to the revised Lugano…

We investigate the financial crisis's impact on earnings management behavior in the German-origin banking sector during the financial crisis 2007/2008. Controlling for similar institutional settings and company differences, we use four different earnings management measures (discretionary loan loss provisions, small gains/great losses, market to book ratio and an aggregate…

This paper derives the welfare optimal size and intensity of job search assistance programs in a general equilibrium model where the labor market is affected by search frictions. Both instruments have a priori ambiguous fiscal implications: their direct employment stimulating effects broaden the base of the labor income tax and increase revenues, while also incurring direct costs. At…

The paper investigates the consequences of outsourcing of labor intensive activities to low-wage economies. This trend challenges the two basic functions of the welfare state, redistribution and social insurance when private unemployment insurance markets are missing. The main results are: (i) outsourcing raises unemployment and labor income risk of unskilled workers; (ii) it…

This paper proposes a growth-oriented dual-income tax by combining an allowance for corporate equity with a broadly defined flat tax on personal capital income. Revenue losses are compensated by an increase in the value added tax. The paper demonstrates the neutrality properties of the reform with respect to investment, firm financial decisions and organizational choice. Tax rates…