With the recent years' development, institutional investors have played a more important role in corporate governance and operational decisions of China listed companies. However, the empirical research on the influence of institutional ownership on capital structure is rare. Based on the principle of minimizing financing cost, this paper constructs a dynamic optimizing model of capital structure from the angle of institutional ownership. We also use panel data of 568 China listed companies of manufacturing industry from 2002 to 2004 to make regression of fixed effects model. The evidences indicate that the percentage of institutional stockholdings has positive relation with capital structure, which means the debt ratio increases when the percentage of institutional stockholdings increases. We also find that the decentralized degree of institutional ownership is negatively related to capital structure, that is, a more decentralized degree of institutional ownership causes a lower debt ratio.
Christian Vang Eghoff, Catherine Farvacque-Vitkovic, Alicia Casalis, Mahine Diop
Taking its outset in a description of the urban sector in Mali, this report explores the most promising entry points for future urban and municipal development. Mali is much less urbanized than other countries in the region but its urban areas are growing very rapidly. Mali's cities already play a preponderant role in creating the country's wealth. The lack of access to basic services and infrastructure lies at the heart of Mali's urban development problems. This situation is caused by a shortage of funds for urban development, which are far from commensurate with the rapid pace of urbanization. Efforts to improve urban management will have to be stepped up as part of the decentralization process and a strong Government commitment to the urban sector is strategically important with respect to economic development objectives and fighting poverty. On the basis of the review of the urban sector, this report recommends continuing efforts on two levels: (i) on the level of a limited number of individual cities through targeted activities carried out under Municipal Contracts, and (ii) at the national level through cross-cutting accompanying measures to increase resources available for urban development, promote local economic development, improve the land markets and increase the production of plots, ensure financing and functioning of basic services, reinforce cooperation between municipalities, and equip the cities with urban planning tools.
The Supreme Court (hereinafter the Court) decision 93 nu 13162 (rendered on April 15, 1994) is about a case where a corporation (hereinafter the Corporation) established in Hong Kong moved its office to the Netherlands. In this decision, however, the Court decided that the Corporation was not a resident in the Netherlands as defined under the Korea - Netherlands Tax Treaty (hereinafter the Treaty) on grounds that its of effective was not located in the Netherlands. This decision is one of the rare cases where the Court actually dealt with interpretation of tax and probably the first and only case thus far where the Court issued an opinion on a transaction that could be called treaty shopping. In addition, the Court imposed on the taxpayer the burden of proof as to its eligibility to benefits, which is an exception to the general rule that the burden of proof in a tax litigation is in principle on the tax authorities, and ruled that, in this case, the appellant did not sufficiently fulfill its burden of proof. In the opinion, this decision accurately confirmed one of the basic principles regarding the interpretation of tax treaties, that the provisions of the Dutch domestic tax law is the controlling criteria as to the residence requirement which is the very first test for anyone to be eligible for benefits. Accordingly, the Court stated that the Dutch domestic tax law consider any corporation with its of effective as being resided in the Netherlands. The Court then interpreted the term place of effective management as the where its substantial business operation is conducted and its decisions are made. However, it was erroneous for the Court to raise such irrelevant facts that the Corporation had no fixed office or employee, or that the amount of the directors' fees were very small to support its decision. Nevertheless, we can easily understand that it would have been difficult for the Court to decide otherwise in this case, where the Dutch Ministry of Finance had never replied to the inquiry made by the Korean National Tax Service as to whether the Corporation was indeed a Dutch resident. As to the issue of burden of proof, it also seems plausible to put it on the side of taxpayer when benefits are at stake, because here it is clear that the relevant evidences are usually under the control of the taxpayers rather than the tax authorities. However, we should note that it may be too harsh a conclusion to put the obligation to pay the tax on the withholding agent when it had no means to easily identify whether it had any such obligation at the moment of payment and when the transaction has already been closed and it has fulfilled its contractual obligation to make the payment long before the tax assessment.
This paper analyzes the policy model of the Brazilian Ministry of Health from 1990 to 2002. The methodology included interviews with key actors in the national health policy, document review, and analysis of the Federal budget and official databases. The Brazilian Ministry of Health underwent major changes under the influence of the health reform agenda and the liberal State reform agenda prevailing in the 1990s, shaped by two movements: institutional unification of national policy control and political/administrative decentralization. The Federal role was diminished in terms of direct services provision, and there were changes in financing and regulation. The model in the late 1990s featured strong Federal induction of States and municipalities and the adoption of market regulation strategies. There is no record of a long-term planning effort, which favors distortions in the Federal intervention model and hinders solutions to structural problems in the Brazilian health system.
“Front-loading” primaries and caucuses - the movement of state delegate selection contests to the beginning of the nomination calendar - is problematic for the integrity of the presidential nominating system. Because it results from decentralized decision making by self-interested states, front-loading also poses a problem for federalism. Indeed, most proposed remedies for front-loading would impinge on federalism in some manner. In analyzing those remedies, one must assess their interaction with federalism both procedurally and substantively. For example, a federally imposed national primary would be harmful to federalism on both dimensions; regional primaries negotiated among states would be best for federalism procedurally but are of dubious efficacy; the national parties have an ambiguous relationship to federalism; and a change in federal campaign finance rules would seek to combine a centralized process with a decentralized result. The best solution might be to use available central levers to try to change campaign dynamics and thus the incentives for states to schedule their primaries early.
This thesis examines the Brazilian municipalism after the Constitution of 1988. It verifies the municipalities performance in the provision of local health services vis--vis the decentralization of this policy due to the creation of the SUS (Unified Health System). It argues that the process of health services decentralization developed during the 90's presented two different steps: the step of autonomist decentralization, between 1990 and 1998, when the municipalities were totally free to choose their own local health policies; and the step of the driven decentralization, after the creation of the Basic Assistance Floor -PAB, when the municipalities started receiving targeted incomes, which could be used exclusively for specific health programs, determined by the Health Department. However, as we demonstrate, the both steps were incapable to decrease the extant regional inequalities in what regards the supply, the access and the financing of municipal health services. To summarize, we demonstrate that the inequalities in health produced by our federalism were not balanced through the outline of policies that municipalized the health services.
This paper presents a protocol aiming at proving that an encryption system contains structural weaknesses without disclosing any information on those weaknesses. A verifier can check in a polynomial time that a given property of the cipher system output has been effectively realized. This property has been chosen by the prover in such a way that it cannot been achieved by known attacks or exhaustive search but only if the prover indeed knows some undisclosed weaknesses that may effectively endanger the cryptosystem security. This protocol has been denoted zero-knowledge-like proof of cryptanalysis. In this paper, we apply this protocol to the Bluetooth core encryption algorithm E0, used in many mobile environments and thus we suggest that its security can seriously be put into question.
The background of this research is the fall of the New Order Regime which occurred in 1998, followed closely behind by the creation of local autonomy policy. This policy was issued based on Law Numer 22/1999 (Local Government) and Law Numer 25/1999 (Intergovernmental Finance). Both laws have changed the local public administration from a centralized into a decentralized system and also caused reform in some components such as planning, organization, personnel, and finance. Even though Law Number 22/1999 had been implemented for four years, the reform seemed very tardy. In fact, several regions showed a progress tendency that was the reverse of the expectation. For this reason, the question that will be formulated in this research is 'Why was there a different level of performance of local public administration reform after the local autonomy implementation in Indonesia?' The conceptual framework of this research is outlined as follows: it is presumed that the performance of Local Public Administration Reform is determinedby two major independent variables that are interrelated. These are the Central Government Role Variable and the Response of Local Government and its Environment toward the Reform. The Central Government Role consists of two variables Decentralization as an Architecture Reform Variable and the Policy Reform Variable. Both major variables interrelate with some varibles at the local level such as the Mayor/Regent's Role, the Response of Bureaucrats and Politicians to Local Public Administration Reform, and the Response of Civil Society to the Reform.
Deepak Singh highlights one of the emerging approaches to global data, Freebase. Recall that at scifoo we also heard about Google's offer to host scientific data: I am attracted by Freebase/Metaweb and also DBPedia/openlink. These are technologies which build ontological-supported repositories where large amounts of metadata can be centrally stored.
Purpose The purpose of this research is to show how the Slovenian government has recognised the need for local government fiscal autonomy and to enhance this has instigated the introduction of an ad valorem property tax. Since independence in 1991 Slovenia has embarked on a path of administrative and fiscal decentralization. Local government has been subject to significant reform in terms of the creation of additional municipalities and the allocation of devolved expenditure responsibilities. Design/methodology/approach The paper provides an in‐depth analysis of central and local government statistics to demonstrate the potential role of the property tax in any future decentralisation of responsibilities and funding to the local level. Findings This study finds that in terms of both municipal revenue and expenditure there remains a high degree of centralised control by the state. On the positive side with the introduction of the new property tax there is an expectation for greater local fiscal autonomy, however, on the negative side progess towards the introduction of the new tax has been extremely slow. The study concludes that while the proposals are likely to provide for a more stable and uniform local tax, there appears to be lethargy in implementing the property tax. Originality/value It is argued in this paper that accession to the EU has created pressures for Slovenia to adopt a financing model which gives greater fiscal autonomy to local government. Currently, the high level of centralization is seen as a barrier to greater devolution of powers which in turn has a negative effect on the introduction of the new property tax.
The institutional environment of elementary education funding in Brazil suffered several modifications in the last decades, mainly during the 1990's. In order to join the prioritization of elementary education to the decentralization of educational public policies – leading it to local level – the federal government promoted a deep reform in the legal framework, even through constitutional amendments that became important rules for education funding. One of the major changes was the creation of the 'Elementary Education Development and Maintenance and Teachers Valorization Fund' (Fundo de Manutenção e Desenvolvimento do Ensino Fundamental e Valorização do Magistério – FUNDEF) destined to the financing of elementary education in Brazil. Despite these reforms, the situation of elementary education in Brazil is still extremely precarious: neither does it fulfills the needs of its people, nor is compatible with Brazilian State economical capacities. From the analytical standpoint, with basis on the 'New Institutional Economy' theoretical reference, the creation of earmarked revenues for education policies is considered the main financing rule for elementary education, and served to reduce several transaction costs. These costs are associated to the discontinuity of actions and to the opportunistic behavior of the players involved in the public policies’ scenario. Among these players are representatives of the executive, legislative and public powers, state bureaucracy and civil society. This thesis seeks to evaluate if this set of education financing strategies - created by earmarked revenues mainly for elementary education - is sufficient condition to achieve the efficiency required to carry out those education policies, or if other effects, linked to the strategy or not, contribute to the maintenance of inefficiencies. This thesis uses as theoretical reference the 'New Institutional Economy', which is mainly based in the works by North (1988 and 1990), Williamson (1985) and Miller (1992). This reference focuses on the central role of institutions in the evaluation of social-economical problems. Thus, the first session of the thesis aims at describing the core elements of this theory, such as the concepts of formal and informal rules, transaction costs and governance structures. Based on this initial structure, the theoretical model used in the thesis is built and can be considered as an adaptation of the New Institution Economy approach for organizations in the public sector. This model takes into consideration important elements and characteristics of institutions, players and governance structures that should be accounted for when analyzing public organizations. Under the light of this theoretical model, the institutional array developed for elementary education financing in Brazilian cities is analyzed into further detail; comprehending the institutional scenario, that is, the rules of the game, and the behavior of the players face to these rules. In order to empirically test the theoretical assumptions of this thesis, a case study is carried out in the city of São Paulo. The present thesis aims at contributing to the discussions on the necessary changes on education policies, with special emphasis in the institutional adequacy between the formal rules established to the policies and the characteristics, values and skills of the players involved in the implementation of these rules. The very institutional theory anticipates that the disregard of these factors implies the possibility of occurring transaction costs associated to public manager control costs and to the opportunistic behavior of the players involved in the public policies’ scenario. Therefore, even in the existence of earmarked revenues, the efficient conduction of public education policies will not be guarantied.