Tax policy when countries compete for third market exports

We examine the welfare and other consequences of tax policy in a third market export model where duopolists located in two countries compete in prices. With tax competition between governments, we allow for welfare-maximizing governments in the two countries to delegate tax setting responsibility to policy-makers who have different objectives than the governments. The unique equilibrium in the tax competition environment involves both governments delegating tax setting responsibility to tax revenue-maximizing policy-makers. This equilibrium yields higher welfare for both countries than the outcome when the governments delegate to welfare-maximizing policy-makers. The paper also compares tax competition with tax harmonization and shows that when the entire export market is served, tax harmonization improves the welfare of the country that houses the low cost firm, while the other country may be immiserized.

Is narrative identity four-dimensionalist?

The claim that selves are narratively constituted has attained considerable currency in both analytic and continental philosophy. However, a set of increasingly standard objections to narrative identity are also emerging. In this paper, I focus on metaphysically realist versions of narrative identity theory, showing how they both build on and differ from their neo-Lockean counterparts. But I also argue that narrative realism is implicitly committed to a four-dimensionalist, temporal-parts ontology of persons. That exposes narrative realism to the charge that the narratively constituted self, on the one hand, and the self that is the object of much of our everyday self-reference and self-experience, on the other, can’t be the same thing. This conclusion may well force narrativists to abandon metaphysical realism about narrative selves — which, in turn, may leave the invocation of ‘narrativity’ as identity-constituting somewhat under-motivated.

Mediating the good life: prostitution and the Japanese Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1880s–1920s

This article examines how the Japanese Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in the name of promoting liberty and rights of women in their relations with men, constructed hierarchies to ascribe value to themselves through moral condemnation. The JWCTU used extramarital sex as a political issue to strengthen the position of the legal wife in the household as opposed to the concubine and prostitute. Their efforts to prohibit Japanese women from going abroad as prostitutes, while understood as an attempt to end a system of slavery that violated the inherent rights of Japanese womanhood, was actually a desire to regulate the behaviour of the poor. The JWCTU based its moral reform agenda on the importance of premarital chastity, strict monogamy and the obligation to work for the good of the nation. Its construction of prostitution as evil represents an important strand in the history of the relationship between prostitution and family as a socio-political issue in modern Japan.

Low spatial frequency contrast sensitivity deficits in migraine are not visual pathway selective

Some people who experience migraine demonstrate reduced visual contrast sensitivity that is measurable between migraines. Contrast sensitivity loss to low spatial frequency gratings has been previously attributed to possible impairment of magnocellular pathway function. This study measured contrast sensitivity using low spatial frequency targets (0.25–4 c/deg) where the adaptation aspects of the stimuli were designed to preferentially assess either magnocellular or parvocellular pathway function (steady and pulsed pedestal technique). Twelve people with migraine with measured visual field abnormalities and 17 controls participated. Subjects were tested foveally and at 10° eccentricity. Foveally, there was no significant difference in group mean contrast sensitivity. At 10°, the migraine group demonstrated reduced contrast sensitivity for both the stimuli designed to assess magnocellular and parvocellular function (P < 0.05). The functional deficits measured in this study infer that abnormalities of the low spatial frequency sensitive channels of both pathways contribute to contrast sensitivity deficits in people with migraine.

A dynamic model of tourism, employment and welfare: the case of Hong Kong

The present paper uses a dynamic open-economy model with wage indexation to examine the impact of tourism on employment and welfare. Both short-run and long-run situations are analysed. It is well known that tourism converts non-traded goods into tradable goods. An increase in the demand for a non-traded good raises its relative price, which results in an expansion of the non-traded sector at the expense of the traded goods sector. This output shift raises labour employment in the short run. However, in the long run, the higher relative price leads to higher wages, resulting in a negative impact on labour employment. If the output effect is dominant, the expansion in tourism raises employment and welfare. However, under realistic conditions tourism may lower both labour employment and welfare due to rising costs. These results are demonstrated by simulating a dynamic model for the case of Hong Kong.

Price dynamics, foreign exchange and anticipated shocks in a tourism economy

Using a dynamic model of an open monetary economy, this paper examines the effects of tourism-related anticipated shocks on goods prices and foreign exchange reserves. Foreign tourists consume mainly non-traded goods in holiday destinations, converting them into exportable goods. This gives rise to a tourism terms-of-trade effect that affects the accumulation of foreign exchange. Announcements of anticipated events bring tourist visits forward, resulting in an initial underadjustment or an over-adjustment in the prices of the non-traded goods when the tourism termsof-trade effect is positive or negative. This leads to an increase or a decrease in foreign reserves in the long run.