National Competition Policy

Economic reform in Australia certainly did not start with the Hilmer Report — it has been underway for the last 15 or so years. It began with financial deregulation and floating of the Australian dollar in the 1980s and the reduction of tariff protection, and includes more recent initiatives such as moving from the centralized wage fixing system to more flexible enterprise bargaining arrangements, restructuring of government business enterprises, developments in public administration and most recently the focus on competition policy.     

Rituals of Reform,Policy Transfer,and the National University Corporation Reforms of Japan

In 2004, Japan restructured the state‐directed public university system to create the national university corporations (NUCs). Proponents of the reforms made explicit mention of agentification in the United Kingdom, changes to university management structures elsewhere, and reforms in the wider Japanese public sector. As such, the NUC reforms are an example of policy transfer. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, however, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has not surrendered the large degree of control it had manifested over the university system. Rather the means of control have changed from largely direct ones to largely indirect ones. Policy transfer provided a means by which MEXT could legitimate its policy stance by referring to developments elsewhere, show it was responding to pressure for reform by adopting its rhetoric and superficial forms, but use this to capture the policy agenda to its own ends.     

论我国企业重组的税收政策

企业重组是企业为适应市场发展的要求．提高竞争能力,降低经营风险的经营决策行为。在未来的几年中．企业重组将成为我国经济生活中的一道亮丽的风景线。本通过分析在现行税制下企业重组的税收政策,提出了完善现行税制及税收政策的建议。     

Tax Harmonization and Tax Competition: Contrasting Views and Policy Issues in Three Federal Countries

This article contrasts divergent attitudes toward tax competitionand tax harmonization in Australia, Canada, and the United States.Despite strong arguments on each side, competition and harmonizationare not necessarily conflicting goals except at the extremes.The most troublesome issue is the tradeoff between promotingefficiency in the public sector and in the private sector. Dueto the difficulty of measuring and comparing efficiency in bothsectors, this issue is not likely to be resolved objectively.However, tax-base harmonization appears to be the best compromisein pursuing both goals. Some fundamental problems remain regardlessof the policy direction taken, including limiting "micro-level"competition and addressing environmental and redistributiveconcerns in regional and local arenas. Improved intergovernmentalcooperation and experimentation are viewed as the key to resolvingthese issues.     

Why National Competition Policy?

Strategies to enhance Australia's international competitiveness need to embrace reform of key infrastructure service industries, reform of the regulatory environment, industrial relations reform and taxation reform. Key aspects of this reform agenda can only be addressed through a shared commitment by all levels of government. Ownership of the public utilities responsible for the nation's key infrastructure networks and services is divided among commonwealth, state and territory (and local) governments. Achieving a substantial lift in the productivity of these industries and ensuring the emergence of truly national infrastructure networks relies on agreement by all governments to public utility reform and the removal of barriers to cross-border competition. Moreover, the regulation of industries, occupations and businesses is primarily the responsibility of state and territory governments, hence regulatory reform also requires a cooperative approach by all governments.
While most jurisdictions have taken some steps to reform public utilities and to deregulate certain product markets, to date reform has been piecemeal. A more systematic approach to removal of impediments to competition across the board is likely to be necessary to lift the overall competitiveness of the Australian economy. The agreement by the commonwealth and all states and territories to implement the National Competition Policy (NCP) not only provides the necessary shared commitment to reform across the board, it also provides the rewards and sanctions needed to sustain that commitment in the face of certain resistance from vested interests.     

Non-Governmental Policy Transfer: The Strategies of Independent Policy Institutes

Discussions of policy transfer have primarily focused on official actors and networks. The non-governmental mode of policy transfer via foundations, think tanks and non-governmental organizations is a relatively neglected dimension. Accordingly, this paper addresses the role of think tanks in promoting the spread of policy ideas about privatization. The importance of think tanks to policy transfer is their ability to diffuse ideas by (1) acting as a clearing-house for information; (2) their involvement in the advocacy of ideas; (3) their involvement in domestic and transnational policy networks; and (4) their intellectual and scholarly base providing expertise on specialized policy issues. Concepts from comparative public policy and international relations such as "social learning" and "epistemic communities" are used to outline the way think tanks advocate innovative policy ideas. However, not only have think tanks been effective in promoting the transfer of policy ideas, the international spread of think tanks also exhibits organizationaltransfer.     

湖南就业问题与税收政策探讨

近年来,湖南就业形势总体趋好,就业规模不断扩大,就业结构趋于完善,企业自主经营、个人自主就业机制逐步形成.但同时也面临着劳动力供求矛盾突出,就业需求增长放缓,农村人口比例居高不下,就业困难群体持续增加等问题.湖南省实施就业税收优惠政策已经取得了一些成效,为进一步完善促进就业的税收政策,扩大就业和再就业,我们要调整和完善现行税收政策,发展民营经济和中小企业、鼓励第三产业发展以及实行城乡统一劳动力市场等.     

政策转移失败原因分析

在以往的政策转移实践中,有成功也有失败。其失败原因可以概括为以下四点:政策转移主体支持不力,主要指决策人员指导思想及认识不正确,执行人员执行力不足,间接主体阻碍政策的转移;政策转移客体不配合,主要指一部分受教育程度较低的政策客体会妨碍转移政策的贯彻执行,一部分利益受损的政策客体会反对转移政策的贯彻执行;政策信息漏损与失真,主要指难以为政策转移提供准确的信息资料,信息在传递过程中往往会产生漏损现象;政策环境不适应,主要指政治环境的限制、经济环境的约束及文化环境的阻隔。     

Tax Evasion from a Policy Perspective: The Case of the Motor Fuels Tax

In recent years, many state legislatures have proposed, considered, and adopted legislation intended to thwart fuel tax evasion. Despite the recent political activity of state legislatures to increase fuel tax compliance, there is relatively little research examining the evasion of excise taxes in general or the motor‐fuel tax in particular. This article examines the issues of fuel tax evasion from a policy perspective. We discuss the vulnerability of the fuel tax to evasion and examine how state legislatures in the southern region have responded to the tax evasion issue. We focus the examination on four major initiatives implemented at the federal level in four broad policy areas: tax administration, penalties and punishments, liability, and visibility and enforcement. These findings provide important insight for developing new strategies to enhance compliance to the fuel tax in particular and excise taxes in general. Furthermore, we discuss how issues of fuel tax compliance can be extended to other compliance issues such as Medicare fraud.     

Immigration Policy and Hispanic Representation in National Elections

For the first time in U.S. history, after decades of unprecedented growth in interior immigration enforcement disproportionately impacting Latinos, ten percent of the U.S. House of Representatives is Hispanic. Using congressional district-level data on all candidates participating in general elections to the U.S. House of Representatives between 2008 and 2018, we show that intensified immigration enforcement suppressed Hispanics’ representation in congressional elections. The effect—nonexistent for other minorities, such as non-Hispanic Black candidates, as well as in primary elections—is driven by local police-based measures and diminished electoral support. Furthermore, it appears more harmful during midterm elections and in localities without a sanctuary policy.     

The Implications of National Competition Policy

The Competition Policy Reform Bill 1995 is part of a national policy package which aims to free up competition in Australian markets. The objective is to systematically remove anti-competitive behaviour so that efficiency is improved to the public benefit.
While one can endorse the concept that economic efficiency is best served in a purely competitive market, where businesses can get on with their responsibilitiy to maximise profits, concerns exist as to whether it is possible to impose legislatively and unilaterally an economic principle or philosophy on a nation that will achieve its lofty objectives.
These proposals were developed before the 1996 federal election.     

National Competition Policy: The Downside

Identifying the ‘downside’ of competition policy raises the question of whether there is an ‘up-side’. Competition is supposed to drive the organisers of commodity production to minimise the costs they have to bear in some short to medium term, within environments more or less circumscribed by government regulations. The actual period tends to be that for which the providers of finance are prepared to wait for returns after a poorly performing company is restructured. Economists used to say that cost minimisation requires an industry structure in which there are many independent producers. Nowadays, more enlightened writers speak of ensuring that the market positions held by existing producers are contestable by prospective new producers. The question of what government in Australia may do to establish competition in this sense of competition has recently focussed on the desirable re-organisation of public enterprises, perhaps especially those that exist at the level of the states. So what are the dimensions of the ‘downside’ of opening the market positions occupied by public enterprises to contestation by private companies, especially those which are monopolies? The answer takes a large measure of the gloss off the Hilmer promises. The problems to be addressed are: the limit put on contestability where there is an element of natural monopoly; the tendency for cost minimisation to depend on the tighter management of labour; and, the difficulty of insisting simultaneously on both ‘competition’ and the satisfaction of ‘community service obligations’ (CSOs).     

Inertia and Neighboring Effects in Local Tax Policy: Illinois' Experience with a Local Option Tax on Telecommunications

Illinois reconfigured the legal basis and constraints for municipal telecommunications taxes in 2003. We use data on municipalities' initial (assigned) tax rate, fiscal condition, population, changes in tax rates of neighboring municipalities and neighbors' initial (assigned) tax rates to explain changes in telecommunications tax rates between 2003 and 2008. We find clear evidence of an important and statistically significant inertia effect—municipalities initially assigned a zero tax rate continued to stay tax free—and important and statistically significant neighboring effects—municipalities whose neighbors changed tax rates did the same, and municipalities whose neighbors were assigned relatively high initial rates increased their own rates faster.     

National Competition Policy: Progress and Prospects

National Competition perspectives Policy — contending perspective.
The Hilmer Report is to competition what fertiliser is to grass (Ian Salmon, BCA 1995).
These reforms are good for the Australian economy and community. They hold the promise of helping to deliver more growth, more jobs and lower inflation but with higher real wages and a better standard of living (Hon. George Gear MP 1995).
The legislation has the potential to be very far reaching and may have implications far broader than originally intended (General Evidence — Australian Senate Economics Legislation Committee 1995).
The process of putting detailed legal and administrative flesh on the bare bone of the principles was not going to be easy. The resolution of issues. at times came down to the balance of power rather than good sense (Christine Charles, South Australian Dept of Premier and Cabinet 1995).
The practical failure to deliver on the claims about competition and efficiency are becoming increasingly evident (Professor Frank Stilwell 1995).
The Commission has a number of concerns on the impact on rural and remote communities and how the competing demands of increased competition and maintaining levels of community service obligations will be balanced in a newly competitive environment (ATSIC 1995).     

Tax Britannica: Nineteenth Century Tariffs and British National Income

The literature on British economic history presumes thatBritain was a free trader after the repeal of the Corn Lawsand that her tariff levels were thus below those which wereoptimal for maximizing utility. Presumably, if the optimalBritish tariffs had been positive and greater than the levelsestablished by mid-century, a reduction to zero of all tariffsthat remained would have lowered British welfare even further.In this paper, we use a simple computable general equilibriummodel to simulate a drop in all British tariffs to zero. Theresulting substantial net increase in British welfaresuggests that British tariffs were much higher than would beconsistent with an optimum tariff policy. More important, thesize of British losses from her high tariff levels suggeststhat British policy was not consistent with the stance of anideological free trader.     

Cross-National Transfer of Policy Ideas: Agencification in Britain and Japan

This study seeks to contribute to the policy transfer literature through a comparison of the British "Next Steps" initiative of agencification (i.e., organizational separation of policy implementation from policy formulation in central departments) and the Japanese reform that officially proclaimed to be inspired by the British example. In addition to confirming the crucial role played by domestic structural constraints in producing variant outputs in different countries, this article also shows that the transfer of policy ideas can be a highly proactive political process in which political actors in the learning country interpret and define both problems and solution as they "borrow" from another country.     

全球化视域下中国政策转移的反思与建构

随着全球化进程逐步深入,政策议程已经越来越多地受到跨国经验的影响.各种团体、国际组织以及各类政策制定者越来越多地转移国际经验到本国的政治、经济与社会中,而处于这一进程中的我国政策制定必将更加不可避免地受到这一趋势的影响.因此,如何适应这一新形势的要求,研究政策转移的特点及规律,特别是探索一个符合中国国情的政策转移体系,以对当下我国政策过程实践有所启发和帮助,是我们亟待解决的新课题.文章以全球化为背景,通过对我国政策转移的回顾与反思,针对影响我国政策转移的主要障碍及其症结,尝试建构当前我国政策转移的框架体系及保障机制,以供我国政策转移实践之参考.