Progressive taxation and tax morale

Due to strong evidence indicating that tax morale affects actual tax-paying behavior, finding the determinants of tax morale could help both to understand and to fight tax evasion. In this paper we analyze the effect of progressive taxation on individual tax morale using a cross-country approach—a research question that has not been investigated in the existing literature. Our theoretical analysis leads to two testable predictions. First, an individual’s tax morale is higher, the more progressive the tax schedule is. Second, the positive impact of tax progressivity on tax morale declines with income. In our empirical analysis we make use of a unique dataset of tax progressivity measures, namely the World Tax Indicators, and follow most of the tax morale literature by employing the World Values Survey to measure individual tax morale. Controlling for a wide range of potential confounders, we are able to confirm both hypotheses in our empirical analysis.     

Private Governance and the South: lessons from global forest politics

Abstract

Private governance beyond the state is emerging as a prominent debate in International Relations, focusing on the activities of private non-state actors and the influences of private rules and standards. However, the conceptual framework of governance has until recently been employed predominantly with reference to the oecd world. Despite this restricted view, a growing number of processes, organisations and institutions are beginning to affect developing countries and new institutional settings open up avenues of influence for actors from the South. In the context of a lively debate about global governance and the transformation of world politics, this article asks: what influences does private governance have on developing countries, their societies and their economies? What influence do southern actors have in and through private governance arrangements? I argue that we can assess the specific impacts of private governance, as well as potential avenues of influence for actors from the South, with regard to three functional pathways: governance through regulation, governance through learning and discourse, and governance through integration. Focusing in particular on private governance in the global forest arena, I argue that, while southern actors have not benefited so much economically from private certification schemes, they have been partially empowered through cognitive and integrative processes of governance.     

Aktuelle Rechtsprechung zum ElektroG

Das deutsche “Gesetz über das Inverkehrbringen, die Rücknahme und die umweltvertr?gliche Entsorgung von Elektro- und Elektronikger?ten” (ElektroG) ist eines der auf europ?ischen Vorgaben beruhenden Rechtsinstrumente zur Vermeidung und Entsorgung von Abf?llen. In letzter Zeit sind hierzu eine Reihe von h?hergerichtlichen Urteilen ergangen, so dass bisher bestehende Unsicherheiten über die Reichweite der Registrierungspflicht beseitigt, sowie mehr Klarheit bei der Gruppenfinanzierungsverantwortlichkeit geschaffen wurde.     

Beyond opportunism: Intermediary loyalty in regulation and governance

Regulators and other governors rely on intermediaries to set and implement policies and to regulate targets. Existing literatures focus heavily on intermediaries of a single type – Opportunists, motivated solely by self-interest. But intermediaries can also be motivated by different types of loyalty: to leaders (Vassals), to policies (Zealots), or to institutions (Mandarins). While all three types of loyalists are resistant to the traditional problems of opportunism (slacking and capture), each brings pathologies of its own. We explain the behavioral logic of each type of loyalty and analyze the risks and rewards of different intermediary loyalties – both for governors and for the public interest. We illustrate our claims with examples drawn from many different realms of regulation and governance.     

Who Benefits from Aid for Trade? Comparing the Effects on Recipient versus Donor Exports

Abstract

Recent studies offer an ambiguous picture on the effectiveness of foreign aid in strengthening the export capacity of recipient countries. Moreover, the literature on aid for trade (AfT) has often neglected the fact that exporters in the donor countries may be among the main beneficiaries. We simultaneously estimate and compare the effects of AfT on trade in both directions. We find that AfT increases recipient exports to donors as well as recipient imports from donors. The first effect tends to dominate the latter, which contradicts the sceptical view that donors grant AfT primarily to promote their own export interests.     

Agency in earth system governance: refining a research agenda

In the face of global environmental change, a key question for the social sciences is how to organize the co-evolution of societies and their natural environment. In this context, a new long-term research program, the Earth System Governance Project, proposes several key issues to be examined: architecture, agency, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation and access. The contributions to this special issue have focused on the analytical problem of agency. For example, they have examined newly emerging or understudied agents of global environmental governance, or offered a fresh assessment of agency in the context of existing governance mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. This concluding article outlines several insights provided by the contributions to this special issue regarding four key questions underlying the study of agency in global environmental governance. First, they call attention to the ingredients or processes that characterize agency in the first place and thus distinguish actors from agents. Secondly, the authors highlight the differences among agents and how they interact with each other. Thirdly, they point toward variation in the ways that agents may acquire authority. Finally, the contributions to this special issue suggest that there may be several approaches to evaluating agency, with different consequences. Thus, taken together, the contributions to this special issue provide a starting point for broadening our understanding of agency in earth system governance.