The Rise of The Swiss Tax Haven in the Interwar Period: An International Comparison

The history of tax havens is still little known for the decades before World War II. Up to now the studies that have focused on the 1920s and 30s have presented either a very general perspective on the development of tax havens or a narrow national point of view. Based on unpublished historical archives of four countries, this paper offers therefore a new comparative look on international tax competition during this period in order to answer the following question: was the Swiss case - already considered as a quintessential tax haven at the time - specific in comparison to other banking centres? This research has two results. On the one hand, the 1920s and 30s appear as something of a golden age of opportunity for avoiding taxation through the relocation of assets. Actually, most of the financial centres granted consistent tax benefits for imported capital, while the extremely limited degree of international cooperation and the usual guarantee of banking secrecy in European countries prevented the taxation of exported assets. On the other hand, within this general balance sheet, the fiscal strategies of a tax haven like Switzerland differed from those of a great financial power like Great Britain. Whereas the Swiss administration readily placed itself at the service of the bankers, the British policy was more balanced between the contradictory interests of the Board of Inland Revenue, the Treasury and the English business circles.

The Rapid Rise of China’s Dairy Sector: Factors Behind the Growth in Demand and Supply, May 2005

With the rapid growth in China’s dairy industry, a number of recent papers have addressed either the supply or the demand trends for dairy products in China. None, however, presents a systematic explanation for the recent growth in both the supply and demand for dairy products. The goal of this paper is to sketch a more comprehensive picture of China’s dairy sector and to assess the nature of the sector’s development in the coming decades. Drawing upon several empirical studies, we examine the trends in dairy product consumption to create a composite picture of the factors underlying the recent growth. We also empirically investigate the sources of production gains in milk supply and assess the relative importance of expanding herd size, changes in the nature of production, technological change, and improvements in efficiency to the overall growth of milk production.

Free Flows, Limited Diversification: Explaining the Fall and Rise of Stock Market Correlations, 1890-2001

Using a new dataset on capital account openness, we investigate why equity return correlations changed over the last century. Based on a new, long-run dataset on capital account regulations in a group of 16 countries over the period 1890-2001, we show that correlations increase as financial markets are liberalized. These findings are robust to controlling for both the Forbes-Rigobon bias and global averages in equity return correlations. We test the robustness of our conclusions, and show that greater synchronization of fundamentals is not the main cause of increasing correlations. These results imply that the home bias puzzle may be smaller than traditionally claimed.

Bowling for fascism: Social capital and the rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, 1919-33

Social capital a dense network of associations facilitating cooperation within a community typically leads to positive political and economic outcomes, as demonstrated by a large literature following Putnam. A growing literature emphasizes the potentially "dark side" of social capital. This paper examines the role of social capital in the downfall of democracy in interwar Germany by analyzing Nazi party entry rates in a cross-section of towns and cities. Before the Nazi Party's triumphs at the ballot box, it built an extensive organizational structure, becoming a mass movement with nearly a million members by early 1933. We show that dense networks of civic associations such as bowling clubs, animal breeder associations, or choirs facilitated the rise of the Nazi Party. The effects are large: Towns with one standard deviation higher association density saw at least one-third faster growth in the strength of the Nazi Party. IV results based on 19th century measures of social capital reinforce our conclusions. In addition, all types of associations veteran associations and non-military clubs, "bridging" and "bonding" associations positively predict NS party entry. These results suggest that social capital in Weimar Germany aided the rise of the Nazi movement that ultimately destroyed Germany's first democracy.

The disturbing 'rise' of global income inequality

We use aggregate GDP data and within-country income shares for theperiod 1970-1998 to assign a level of income to each person in theworld. We then estimate the gaussian kernel density function for theworldwide distribution of income. We compute world poverty rates byintegrating the density function below the poverty lines. The $1/daypoverty rate has fallen from 20% to 5% over the last twenty five years.The $2/day rate has fallen from 44% to 18%. There are between 300 and500 million less poor people in 1998 than there were in the 70s.We estimate global income inequality using seven different popularindexes: the Gini coefficient, the variance of log-income, two ofAtkinson s indexes, the Mean Logarithmic Deviation, the Theil indexand the coefficient of variation. All indexes show a reduction in globalincome inequality between 1980 and 1998. We also find that most globaldisparities can be accounted for by across-country, not within-country,inequalities. Within-country disparities have increased slightly duringthe sample period, but not nearly enough to offset the substantialreduction in across-country disparities. The across-country reductionsin inequality are driven mainly, but not fully, by the large growth rateof the incomes of the 1.2 billion Chinese citizens. Unless Africa startsgrowing in the near future, we project that income inequalities willstart rising again. If Africa does not start growing, then China, India,the OECD and the rest of middle-income and rich countries diverge awayfrom it, and global inequality will rise. Thus, the aggregate GDP growthof the African continent should be the priority of anyone concerned withincreasing global income inequality.

The rise and fall in menopausal hormone therapy and breast cancer incidence.

Studies conducted in different areas of North America and Europe showed a 5-10% decline in the incidence of breast cancer following reductions up to 70% in menopause hormone therapy (HT) use after 2002. The observation that the decline was larger in (or limited to) women aged > or =50 years weighs in favour of an effect of reduced HT use on breast cancer incidence. However, changes in screening are also likely to play a role in the decreasing incidence of breast cancer observed in several countries. In particular, the technical improvements and the increased effectiveness of breast cancer screening and detection during the 1990s led to a decreased number of pre-clinical cases found by screening in subsequent years. Further, disentangling the effects of HT use and screening is difficult, as women who stop using HT may also undergo mammography screening less frequently. Thus, the reasons of the falls in incidence remain open to discussion.

The rise and decline of children's labour participation levels during the early stages of industrialisation. Catalonia (1850-1925)

This article aims to analyse the reasons for the intensive use of childlabour in the 19th century and its subsequent decline in the first thirdof the 20th century in the context of an economy with a highly flexiblelabour supply like that of Catalonia. During the second half of the 19thcentury,factors relating to family economies, such as numerous familiesand low wages for adults, along with the technologies of the time thatrequired manual labour resources, would appear to explain the intensiveuse of child labour to the detriment of schooling. The technologicalchanges that occurred during the first third of the 20th century, thedemographic transition and adult wage increase (for both men and women)explain the schooling of children up to the age of 15 and theconsequent practical abolition of child labour in that new era ofeconomic modernisation.

Environmental factors giving rise to variations in national management accounting practice

Comparative national management accounting is the least developed aspect in the field of international accounting. Only during the second half of the 1990's some comparisons of national managementaccounting practice have appeared published but only at theregional level. In this paper a range of factors that give rise to variations in national management accounting practice are postulated. We support this list with examples from a range of analyses of national management accounting practices, drawing particularly on the work of Lizcano (1996) and Bhimani (1996).Finally, twelve key factors are identified as influencing an individual country's approach to management accounting.

Malthusian dynamism and the rise of Europe: Make war, not love

This paper argues that Malthusian regimes are capable of sustained changes in per capita incomes. Shifting mortality and fertility schedules can lead to different steady-state income levels, with long periods of growth during the transition. Europe checked the downward pressure on wages through late marriage, which reduced fertility, and a mortality regime that combined high death rates with high incomes. We argue that both emerged as a result of the Black Death.

Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the rise of European living standards after 1492

When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue thatwelfare rose substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods as a result ofoverseas trade. Colonial luxuries such as tea, coffee, and sugar transformed European diets afterthe discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These goods became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We use three different methodsto calculate welfare gains based on price data and the rate of adoption of these new colonialgoods. Our results suggest that by 1800, the average Englishman would have been willing to forego 10% or more of his income in order to maintain access to sugar and tea alone. These findings are robust to a wide range of alternative assumptions, data series, and valuation methods.