Poverty and profit in Central American forest policies

The failure of forestry to contribute to poverty reduction in Central America is due to public policies which inhibit its profitability. Absence of public regulation of harvesting and competing subsidies to agriculture keep forestry stumpage prices artificially low. This encourages destruction of the forest resource, which damages both the environment and the potential to reduce poverty. A comparison of Costa Rica and Honduras reveals two dissimilar approaches toward forest policy. While Costa Rica attempts to raise producer and grower stumpage prices by tax credits, soft loans and differential species fees, Honduras enforces price ceilings and uses centralized authority to control forest production and export. Both countries exhibit weaknesses in the management control cycle of programming, budgeting, implementing and evaluating their forest policies. Yet the Costa Rican approach has increased stumpage prices already, which bodes well for their forest sector. By contrast, the major beneficiary of Honduran forest policy has been COHDEFOR, the state enterprise responsible for forestry management, controlling production, and running its national system of agroforestry cooperatives. Despite greater public authority and resources than the Costa Rican forest service (DGF), the Honduran forest policy is not likely to increase producer profitability or reduce poverty in the near future.     

Local Taxation in the Netherlands

Provincial governments in the Netherlands have only one general tax at their disposal. However, it has become an insufficient source of revenue for this level of government in the Dutch system. To increase the revenue raising capacity of the provincial governments, thirteen broad-based general tax proposals not used at the local level were examined. The objective was to find a fair and equitable tax that could easily be collected and would result in fl. 200 million in additional revenue for the provincial governments.     

英国的调解制度--近期发展

本文分析了英国近来的一些案例,介绍了英国在采取非诉方法解决争议方面的最新发展,强调了法院在一些案件中的态度.     

The evolution of European legal integration

This article contributes to the development of theories on European integration by testing and exploring statistical models on the long-term development of legislative activity of the European Commission. Drawing on legal information gained from the European Union’s PreLex database and analyzing it with the help of statistical analyses, we map out growth patterns of EU law between 1976 and 2003. We construct time-series models and models based on non-linear regression. While the performance of models based on the traditional theoretical approaches, intergovernmentalism and neo-functionalism, is rather poor, the analysis suggests that nonlinear dynamic models might be an interesting avenue for future conceptualizations of the EU integration process. This article is based on a paper presented at the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union Second Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, “Implications of a Wider Europe: Politics, Institutions and Diversity”, 24–26 June 2004, Bologna, Italy. We would like to thank the seminar participants for useful comments.     

Umschichtungen im Konzern – keine Änderung der wirtschaftlichen Einflussmöglichkeiten

Keine ?nderung der wirtschaftlichen Einflussm?glichkeiten liegt vor, wenn es zu Anteilsübertragungen oder Umgründungen zwischen konzernverbundenen Gesellschaften kommt, aber sich bei jenen Personen nichts ?ndert, die auf der obersten Ebene den Einfluss ausüben. Derartige Handlungen innerhalb eines Konzernverbunds verwirklichen nicht den Tatbestand des § 12a Abs 3 MRG.     

Vorzeitige Auflösung des Mietvertrages – keine Schaffung eines funktionierenden "Urban Entertainment Centers (UEC)"

Die wirtschaftlich unzutreffende Einsch?tzung des Gesch?ftsganges, mit der schon bei Abschluss des Vertrages gerechnet werden konnte, stellt keinen Grund für die vorzeitige Aufl?sung eines Bestandvertrages dar. Die bei Vertragsabschluss nicht voll absch?tzbaren Auswirkungen des Konkurrenzkampfes k?nnen nicht Anlass für die Vertragsaufl?sung sein. Es ist m?glich, dass zwar die Voraussetzungen für eine Zinsminderung, nicht jedoch die Voraussetzungen für eine vorzeitige Vertragsaufhebung vorliegen.