This book is an examination of the sovereign risk and debt limit issues facing the Eurozone (crisis/post crisis) and the need for alternative mechanisms to fund the capital investment requirements of the region.

Kessler shows how political considerations distorted the liberalization process in Mexico, leading to inconsistent and unsustainable patterns of financial policy. Although market reform is promoted in developing countries to improve economic efficiency and stimulate growth, in Mexico financial liberalization provided rent-seeking opportunities for privileged groups and increased the states' ability to finance politically inspired obligations. The research examines four periods: the populist administrations of Echeverria and Lopez Portillo, during which the foundations of modern financial markets were paradoxically laid; the debt-crisis years of de la Madrid, who reversed his party's political strategy by favoring the business class with financial opportunities; the economic transformation undertaken by Carlos Salinas, who mixed genuine reform with destabilizing anti-market measures; and the political watershed of the Zedillo administration, whose unpopular bank rescue gave opposition parties unprecedented power within Mexico's policy making process. Kessler also provides a comparison of financial collapse in two other emerging markets, South Korea and Russia, and examines the political roots of crisis in both countries. He concludes by suggesting how greater attention to questions of power, social organization, and challenges to state authority can help the policy-making community avoid giving well-meaning advice that is unlikely to be implemented in a sustainable way.

Praise for the Classic Guide to the Bond Market

"This is simply the most comprehensive, useful look-it-up book on municipal bonds I’ve ever read (said with all due respect to The ABC of Municipal Bonds my dad wrote in 1937 when I was nine). Read Fundamentals cover to cover. I’m keeping mine in my briefcase, under my arm, at my fingertips. No accountant, financial advisor, attorney, new bond salesman, reporter, regulator, test-writer, cautious, suspicious first-time investor in municipal bonds, or dinner guest is ever going to catch me again with a question about municipal bonds I can’t answer."–Jim Lebenthal, Chairman, Lebenthal & Co.

"Judy Wesalo Temel gives us the Rosetta stone of the municipal bond market, the key to unraveling the many mysteries of ‘muni’s.’ Her book, a fresh take on the old standard Fundamentals of Municipal Bonds, updates chapter and verse on everything from investing to underwriting, from over-the-counter to over-the-Internet. The style is clean, crisp, and as simple as this complex subject can be. Are you a novice who wonders how to invest in bonds? She lays out the basics. Examples are easy to follow–even the mathematical ones that are critical to explaining how municipal bonds work. At the same time, there is plenty of meat for the pros. Whether you need to start from square one and learn all about municipal bonds and how they work, or need a ready reference for specific technical questions you run across as a market professional, this book is for you."–Kathleen Hays, Economics Editor, Credit Markets Reporter, and "Bond Belle" CNBC

"This is a must-read for every scholar, banker, and public official concerned with local government finance in the United States. Judy Wesalo Temel has done the impossible: she has clearly and insightfully explained how we finance the development of the nation's vital public infrastructure. This is an important book, one that will be required reading for professionals responsible for planning, designing, and evaluating publicly financed projects–the health care, transportation, and educational facilities that all citizens rely upon. The bond market is an essential element in the life of local and state government, and this book makes it understandable to all Americans."–Mitchell Moss, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Planning and Director, Taub Urban Research Center, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University

Even before the advent of COVID19, India's economy was in a depression. The condition of vast masses of people, particularly those in the informal sector, was grave. Then the Indian government, responding to the COVID pandemic, imposed the most stringent lockdown measures in the world. The lockdown had a particularly severe impact on the majority of India's people, who number well over one billion. At the same time, the Indian government, compared to other world governments, has provided virtually no financial aid to cushion economic blows to its population. Crisis and Predation explains that this shocking tightfistedness stems from the fact that global financial interests, as well as India's ruling neofascist government, explicitly oppose any sizable expansion of government spending by India. Crisis and Predation, a project of the Mumbai based Research Unit for Political Economy, lays out in meticulous and harrowing detail the economic - and human - crisis currently unfolding in India. As the COVID situation unfolds and pandemic deaths skyrocket, prevailing emergency conditions encourage reliance on security forces, state surveillance, detention of political activists, and censorship of independent media. And yet, this book contends, India could defy the pressures of global finance in order to address the basic needs of its people, an objective within the reach of India's present material capacity. But this would require imposing controls on destabilizing flows of foreign capital and being prepared to forgo foreign capital flows in the future, in other words, a course of democratic national development. For that, Indian rulers would need just what they currently lack: a positive vision of democracy and class alliance to bring it about. This hard hitting and carefully researched book, offering devastating financial analysis, also offers hope for change.

For multinational corporations (MNCs), there is arguably no more important operational function that affects all areas of manufacturing, marketing, management, and finance as international transfer pricing--the practicing of supplying products or services across borders from one part of the organization to another. Its complexity is compounded by the impact of e-commerce, speeding the flow of goods and services; "intangible" assets, such as intellectual property, whose value is difficult to quantify; and the activites of policymakers around the world to update their tax laws and regulations, in efforts to close loopholes that have historically encouraged tax avoidance. In Critical Concerns in Transfer Pricing Policy and Practice, Wagdy Abdallah provides an in-depth overview of these recent trends and developments, and considers their implications for the management of MNCs. In particular, he discusses methods for pricing transferred goods and services in the e-commerce era and analyzes the most recent regulation reforms in such countries as Germany, Mexico, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands. Anticipating increased scrutiny of MNC transfer pricing practices from governments and other external stakeholders, Abdallah outlines a set of practical recommendations for creating a successful transfer pricing system that maximizes value for the company while remaining sensitive to local policies in all of the countries in which it operates.

In his latest work, Macesich examines democracy and its economic counterpart, the free market, and the place of money (monetary and fiscal policy as controlled by the state bureaucracy) in such a system. DeTocqueville warned in the first half of the 19th century that democracy could falter as a consequence of citizens' diminished interest in restraining central authority. And now, there is evidence that vote-maximizing behavior of politicians and politically induced cycles in such key variables as inflation, unemployment, government transfers, taxes and monetary growth have become a critical problem in American democracy. The author examines, then, how best to consider money, monetary policy and the monetary regime--increasingly a function of political/bureaucratic pressures--against the argument for a liberal, freely functioning trading world and for fully-employed, prosperous countries.

This study considers the constraints that must be placed on the exercise of discretionary authority by vote maximizing bureaucracies and political elites if democracy is to thrive and prosper. Satisfactory resolution of these issues is basic to reducing monetary uncertainty and stabilizing the long-term price level, according to Macesich. These issues are deeply rooted in traditional American ideology and experience, and the author makes this clear in weaving together historical, institutional, theoretical, philosophical, and empirical results in the case of money and monetary policy.

In the twentieth century the application of national taxes to income from international business has created complex yet fascinating issues. The co-ordination of national jurisdiction to tax international income has rested formally on a network of bilateral treaties, but its practical administration has relied on a community of specialists; business advisers on the one hand and national officials on the other. The rapid growth of transnational corporations has put great pressure on the international tax system, especially due to the increasing difficulty of ensuring that the internal transfer prices between related firms in different countries reflect a fair and acceptable allocation of costs and profits. Furthermore, the widespread use of intermediary companies formed in tax havens has led to complex counter-measures and a constant process of treaty renegotiation and interaction with national law. The increasingly close administrative co-operation of tax authorities has been criticized as secretive and often arbitrary. Yet proposals for a more comprehensive framework and clearer legitimizing principles and procedures have conflicted with both the vested interests of international firms and with sensitivities about national sovereignity. But major reforms are necessary, even if implemented piecemeal.

Using perspectives from law, economics and social science, this book provides a systematic introduction to the major problems of international taxation of business income. In doing so, it retrieves important policy issues that have become buried in technical intricacies of the international taxation system.

This volume presents selected papers from the 18th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, with major emphasis placed on highlighting the latest research developments in the economics of innovation, public economics, and management. The articles in the volume also address more specialized topics such as luxury fashion, weather derivatives, health management, islamic bonds, and life satisfaction, among others. The majority of the articles focus on phenomena observed in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and South Asia, representing a unique contribution to understanding contemporary research challenges from a different perspective.

Transfer pricing is a dynamic and multidimensional topic that has captured the attention of academicians, corporate executives, and tax authorities for many decades. The issues of transfer pricing are very complex and the stakes are extremely high because more than 40 percent of international trade is trade between related entities. This book examines many important tax and management issues related to transfer pricing. These issues include new transfer pricing regulations and their implications, the selection of proper transfer pricing methods, major environmental variables, and issues concerning the administration of a transfer pricing system. The author also presents many interesting findings from a recent study on U.S. transfer pricing practices.

The author begins by describing the nature of intrafirm transactions in a corporate environment and the significance of intrafirm transactions in international trade. Recent changes and major transfer pricing legislation and regulations in the United States are explained. New transfer pricing regulations in Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the European Community and their implications are also discussed. These are followed by a presentation on research methodology and profile of 143 respondent firms. The author then explains the findings on transfer pricing methods and environmental variables of international transfer pricing. Current transfer pricing practices are compared with those of an earlier study done in 1977. Other issues such as system objectives, resolution of policy conflicts, and policies on outside purchases are covered by this monograph. General conclusions from this research and suggestions for further research are also provided.

Gordon maintains that the United States must implement policy measures to reduce the large amounts of capital it is borrowing from the rest of the world--a problem she attributes, mainly, to low private savings rates and high federal budget deficits. She explains how the United States became a debtor nation, describes the changes in global capital markets that occurred in the 1980s, and analyzes the extent of global capital requirements, the drop in the U.S. savings rate, and the policy measures that could be taken to raise it. Unlike most discussions that focus on faulty international trade practices as a cause of U.S. deficits, Gordon places a large share of the responsibility on U.S. macroeconomic policies. Concise, readable, lucid, Gordon's book will be useful to professionals in banking and finance, and to academics and upper-level students of international business, finance, and economics.

Advances in Taxation publishes relevant, high-quality manuscripts from around the world addressing problems arising from federal, state, local and international taxation. The series uses a wide variety of research methods, including archival, experimental, survey, qualitative and legal approaches to address the problems and issues associated with taxation. Volume 22 of Advances in Taxation continues this approach to taxation, looking at issues concerning challenges in tax administration, taxpayer decisions, ethical issues in taxation, and college savings plans.

This book provides compelling arguments for the exclusive concern with efficiency ('a dollar is a dollar') in all specific areas of public economic policy, leaving the objective of equality to be achieved through the general tax/transfer system. Public policies should ultimately maximize the sum of individual welfares which should be individual happiness rather than preferences. Relative-income and environmental disruption effects cause a bias in favour of private spending which is no longer conducive to happiness socially. Welfare can be increased more by higher public spending on research and environmental protection, including the perfection of the techniques of brain stimulation to increase happiness.

The eight articles in the volume include three articles on tax compliance and related topics. Specifically, Chambers and Curatola examine whether greater tax payment frequency improves compliance and decreases delinquencies. Gemmell and Hasseldine discuss and analyze the state of the tax gap literature. MacGregor and Wilkinson investigate the effect of economic patriotism on taxpayer compliance attitudes. Volume 20 also includes two articles on federal tax issues. Addy and Yoder investigate factors associated with private foundations that narrowly fail a test that would reduce the tax the foundation pays on investment income. Liedtka and Nayar examine the motivation for early exercise of certain stock options. Two articles in this volume examine state tax issues. Jalbert and Fleischman analyze interactions between federal section 179 deduction decisions and Hawaiian tax credit elections. Key investigates the effect of one county's property tax policy decisions on those of adjoining counties. Last but not least, one paper deals with practitioner information search. Cloyd, Spilker and Wood investigate how supervisors can affect the information search behavior of their subordinate practitioners.

Through the arguments for corporate tax harmonisation in the EU and describing the current stage of this process, the legislative rules which are insufficient to solve the many problems implied by the proper functioning of the single market are revealed. The book is an excellent source of documentation for Students of Economics and other readers interested in understanding the taxation trends in the EU.

With the current global crisis, high levels of volatility in trade, capital flows, commodity prices, aid, and the looming threat of climate change, this book brings together high-quality research and presents conceptual issues and empirical results to analyze the determinants of the vulnerability to poverty in developing countries.

The study of poverty dynamics is important for effective poverty alleviation policies because the changes in income poverty are also accompanied by changes in socioeconomic factors such as literacy, gender parity in school, health care, infant mortality, and asset holdings. In order to examine the dynamics of poverty, information from 1,212 households in 32 rural villages in Bangladesh was collected in December 2004 and December 2009. This book reports the analytical results from quantitative and qualitative surveys from the same households at two points of time, which yielded the panel data for understanding the changes in situations of poverty. Efforts have been made to include the most recent research from diverse disciplines including economics, statistics, anthropology, education, health care, and vulnerability study. Specifically, findings from logistic regression analysis, polychoric principal component analysis, kernel density function, income mobility with the help of the Markov chain model, and child nutrition status from anthropometric measures have been presented. Asset holdings and liabilities of the chronically poor as well as those of three other economic groups (the descending non-poor, the ascending poor, and the non-poor) are analyzed statistically. The degrees of vulnerability to poverty are examined by years of schooling, landholding size, gender of household head, social capital, and occupation. The multiple logistic regression model was used to identify important risk factors for a household's vulnerability. In 2009, some of the basic characteristics of the chronically poor were: higher percentage and number of female-headed households, higher dependency ratio, lower levels of education, fewer years of schooling, and limited employment. There was a low degree of mobility of households from one poverty status to another in the period 2004-2009, implying that the process of economic development and high economic growth in the macroeconomy during this time failed to improve the poverty situation in rural Bangladesh.

From unreported gambling winnings and inflated claims of the value of clothing donated to charity to money hidden in Swiss bank accounts and high-profile tax schemes plotted by celebrities and business leaders, the range of tax cheating opportunities is wide and the boundaries and moral status can be hazy. Considering the behavior of individuals and small businesses as well as the involvement of congress and the IRS, Donald Morris combines insights from law, psychology, sociology, criminology, accounting, economics, and philosophy to examine the ethical issues surrounding tax cheating and implications for tax policy.

This data-rich work examines today's most compelling and controversial public health issues, including alcohol and drug abuse, AIDS, abortion, black and infant mortality, drug-affected babies, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, and cigarette smoking. Hammerle's theme is that individual behavioral choices often have far-reaching and costly effects. When practiced by large numbers of people, the human and fiscal costs can be monumental, taxing virtually all of our social systems as well as our financial resources. Hammerle enumerates these costs and, employing economic analytical tools, recommends public policies that will reduce the incidence of such behavior or otherwise reduce its social cost. Some recommendations are outside the mainstream, but all are well substantiated and soundly argued.

This volume will be of great interest to academics, practitioners, and policy-makers in the fields of public health, health care administration, public policy, child protection, and family planning. The work will also interest economists and sociologists in the field of social welfare, as well as lay persons who are concerned about these timely public health issues.

The changing economic conditions of the 1990s now demand a review of the framework and adaptation to conditions currently prevailing in the government's role in social welfare. Recognizing that the national political leadership no longer was willing to support all of the public programs and benefits that it had initiated in the past 50 years, the authors assume that a downsizing of the national government's role in social welfare will occur. This volume explores how downsizing will affect the private sector, nonprofit organizations, families, and individuals, while including specific recommendations and suggestions on how social welfare programs can be reformed or modified.