Changes In Revenues Research Articles

Discrimination and Demand: The Effect of International Players on Attendance in Major League Baseball

Objectives. This article tests the presence of demand-driven discrimination attributable to foreign-born players in Major League Baseball (MLB). We quantify the change in demand at MLB games given the number of foreign players on an MLB team. We further measure how matching market population demographics and team demographics affects demand. Methods. We use regression analysis to estimate the effect on attendance of a change in the number of foreign players on a team. We then use these estimates to find the change in revenue for the team. Results. The results show that the effect evolves over time. At the outset of the sample (1985), the net effect of an additional foreign-born player was a decrease in ticket demand. This effect diminished steadily until 1992, when the net effect became positive, peaking in 2000, and then slightly decreasing until the end of the sample (2005). The matching of team and population demographics was not found to be significant. Conclusions. We discuss the implications of this result on league policy decisions.

A Partial Budget Analysis for Phosphorus‐Based Nutrient Management Plans for Connecticut Dairy Farms

This study estimated changes in costs of manure handling, costs of the fertilizer replacement value of manure, and expected changes in net revenues associated with the implementation of manure nutrient management plans (NMPs) based on the agronomic critical concentration for P using a partial budget analysis. The net revenue from manure management practices traditionally used by farmers in a baseline year was compared with the expected net revenue from practices recommended in NMPs for four dairy farms over 4 or 5 yr in Connecticut. Yields were not measured across the 2862 field‐years. Compared with the baseline year, the average annual estimated change in net revenue associated with manure applications based on the NMPs was a negative $2,900 for one large farm and a positive $17,600 for the other large farm, while the net revenue change was a positive $200 and $1,400 for the two medium‐sized farms. In years after the baseline the average annual estimated change in net revenue for manure management practices for the NMPs compared with the practices reported by farmers was a negative $2,200 for one large farm and a positive $19,300 for the other large farm; the net revenue change was a positive $2,500 and $1,300 for the medium‐sized farms. The net revenue changes from the NMPs were determined largely by the existing soil test P and K values. The complexity of implementing the NMPs made it difficult to obtain the expected net revenue changes.

New evidence on the impact of China’s New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme and its implications for rural primary healthcare: multivariate difference-in-difference analysis

Objectives To determine whether China’s New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), which aims to provide health insurance to 800 million rural citizens and to correct distortions in rural primary care,...

The good, the bad, and the algae: Perceiving ecosystem services and disservices generated by zebra and quagga mussels

Dreissenid (zebra and quagga) mussels are widely recognized as having strong, adverse ecological and economic impacts, e.g., biofouling and loss of water column primary production. We assessed perceptions and values associated with two less often considered ecological outcomes of dreissenid mussel influences on coastal ecosystems along Lake Ontario and the western St. Lawrence River in New York State. One, the generation of water clarity through filtration, we define as an ecosystem service; the other, the production of large amounts of nuisance algae (e.g., Cladophora and Microcystis) is defined as an ecosystem disservice. Surveys of business owners and homeowners quantified their preferences and the formation of values regarding these products of zebra mussel influence. Water clarity increased greatly, particularly in the eastern portion of Lake Ontario, and algal problems increased throughout. Businesses attributed increases and decreases in revenues associated with water clarity and algae; homeowners reported analogous changes in property values. Water clarity was positively associated, and algae negatively associated, with changes in revenues and property values. Threshold responses of costs as functions of filamentous algae were evident. Given the likely continued influx of invasive species due to human activities, further development of the ecosystem service concept should consider potential “goods” and “bads” of invasives and their influence on ecosystem and social system resiliency.

The Impact of the Korean Government's Privatization of Korea Telecom (KT) on the Korean Telecommunications Industry: KT's Financial and Operating Performance

This article examines the relation between the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the changes in their financial and operating performance through the case study of Korea Telecom (KT), which is the biggest telecommunications (telecom) company in Korea. The Korean government completed the privatization of KT in May 2002, arguing that it would help KT to improve its financial and operating performance, as well as contribute to the development of the telecom industry. This article presents the changes in KT's revenues, assets, net income margins, return on assets, real sales per employee, investments, and dividends to evaluate its financial and operating performance, as well as the impact of the privatization of KT on the Korean telecom industry over the pre- and post-privatization windows.

Tax and Expenditure Limits for Long-Run Fiscal Stability

In the private sector, the profit and loss mechanism signals firms the need to adjust their production and costs quickly to changes in demand and revenue. In contrast, in the public sector, no such tool is available to adjust spending to changing conditions. Instead policy makers have incentives to increase government spending year after year, regardless of tax collection.In the current recession, many states are experiencing decreased revenues. Because government services have grown unchecked, they now must make painful and unpopular cuts. California, Arizona, and New Jersey, among other states, have made headlines in recent months with their drastic measures to close budget shortfalls.This pattern raises a difficult question: How do we correct for the inflexibility inherent in state expenditure systems to respect tax payers’ desires for government services over time? Some have experienced relative success in this area because of Tax and Expenditure Limits (TELs) that constrain their budgets. While not a perfect solution, binding TELs prevent policy makers from increasing state spending that does not reflect voters’ willingness to pay for government services.

Bolivia’s Fiscal Rules: Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model Approach

Changes in fiscal revenues in Bolivia allow us to assess its impact on the fiscal budget and spending policy. Based on a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model (DSGE) using stylized facts for small open economy, we’re looking for a simulation of fundamentals’ responses or effects against different fiscal rules applied. In these sense we use two rules: first, where taxes adjust according to the debt level and government expenditures; and second, balanced budget where taxes adjust every time in order to maintain the equilibrium in budget. Our results show that after the fiscal shock hits the economy, the first fiscal rule has mayor stabilization effects on the price level than the second one, around 50%.

A Chronology of Federal Income Tax Policy: 1947-2009

This note provides a chronology of major tax events that involved changes in federal taxes on individual and corporate income from 1948 to 2006. For each event, the note provides background and policy motivation, major provisions, legislative timeline, and estimated revenue changes. As most tax changes were preceded by extensive legislative delays, this chronology suggests that people were likely to have foreknowledge about tax policy. It also finds that postwar income tax policy was typically motivated by one of three rationales: 1) balancing the budget or reducing deficits, 2) controlling inflation, and 3) stimulating economic activity or promoting growth.

The Response of Local School Systems in Georgia to Fiscal and Economic Conditions

The 2001 recession had a major effect on Georgia's fiscal condition. We explore how economic conditions affected state and local financing of K-12 education in Georgia. We find that the magnitude of postrecession cuts in state real revenue per student varied widely across the local school systems in Georgia. We then examine whether and how cuts in real revenue per student at the state level affected local real revenue per student, and we find weak evidence that local real revenue per student is lower when state real revenue per student is higher-that is, local school systems in Georgia seemed to respond to changes in economic conditions and changes in state real revenue per student by increasing local real revenue per student in order to offset decreases in state real revenue per student. We also find no support for the position that the reaction of school systems in Georgia to changes in state revenue was more pronounced in the years immediately following the 2001 recession. We discuss the implications of our findings for the current economic environment.

Corporation tax revenue growth in the UK: A microsimulation analysis

This paper examines the built-in flexibility properties — as measured by the elasticity of revenue with respect to profits — of the UK corporation tax system. Emphasis is placed on determining some of the major influences on the extent to which total corporation tax revenue changes when profits change over the economic cycle. A microsimulation model, CorpSim, is constructed and used to obtain numerical results. In the model, corporations use group relief, capital allowances and losses in a tax-minimising manner. The growth of aggregate corporation tax revenue in practice in the UK appears to be highly volatile in relation to the growth of profits. High volatility in revenue elasticities is found to be especially associated with economic downturns. In mild economic downturns, corporation tax revenue elasticities may rise (because tax growth falls less than profit growth), but in more severe downturns, large but temporary decreases in revenue elasticities (and even negative elasticities) can be expected.

Demand forecasting of diesel passenger car considering consumer preference and government regulation in South Korea

Changing market regulations in South Korea have allowed diesel-fueled passenger cars in the domestic market. The diffusion of diesel cars is tied to issues of environmental impact, energy supply and demand, and changes in tax revenue. Policymakers can influence demand for diesel vehicles to protect social welfare and to observe international environmental protection laws. On the supply side, carmakers need to know consumer preferences regarding new vehicles to arrive at development strategies. This study uses microsimulated demand forecasting to address these issues and predict consumer demand for diesel passenger cars. The model accommodates governmental policies and car attributes such as price and engine efficiency. We find that consumers will likely prefer diesel passenger cars to gasoline ones due to the low operation costs of the former in spite of high purchase price when diesel is relatively cheaper than gasoline. Finally we find that diesel passenger cars will capture a 42% market penetration ratio under the pricing system suggested by the Ministry of Environment of Korea.

Discretionary Fiscal Policies over the Cycle: New Evidence Based on the ESCB Disaggregated Approach

This paper explores how discretionary fiscal policies on the revenue side of the government budget have reacted to economic fluctuations in European Union countries. For this purpose, it uses data on legislated revenue changes and structural indicators provided twice per year by National Central Banks of European Union countries in the ESCB framework for analysing fiscal policy. The analysis is based on the estimation of fiscal policy rules linking these measures of legislated fiscal policy changes to the output gap and other control variables. Then, baseline results are compared with regression estimates where variations of cyclically-adjusted indicators are used as proxy for discretionary fiscal policies, as conventionally proposed in the empirical literature on fiscal policy. Results suggest that, overall, legislated changes in taxes and social security contributions have responded in a strongly pro-cyclical way to the business cycle, while commonly-used cyclical-adjustment methods point to a-cyclicality. JEL Classification: E62, E65, H20

Does Indirect Tax Harmonization Deliver Pareto Improvements in the Presence of Global Public Goods?

This paper identifies conditions under which, starting from any tax distorting equilibrium, destination- and origin-based indirect tax-harmonizing reforms are potentially Pareto improving in the presence of global public goods. The first condition (unrequited transfers between governments) requires that transfers are designed in such a way that the marginal valuations of the global public goods are equalized, whereas the second (conditional revenue changes) requires that the change in global tax revenues, as a consequence of tax harmonization, is consistent with the direction of inefficiency in global public good provision relative to the (modified) Samuelson rule. Under these conditions, tax harmonization results in redistributing the gains from a reduction in global deadweight loss and any changes in global tax revenues according to the Pareto principle. And this is the case independently of the tax principle in place (destination or origin).

Is Tax Progression Good for Employment? Efficiency Wages and the Role of the Prereform Tax Structure

Within an efficiency-wage framework, we study the effects of two revenue-neutral tax reforms that change the progressivity of the labor tax system. A revenue-neutral increase in both the wage tax and the tax exemption and a revenue-neutral change in the composition of labor taxation towards the tax with the smaller base will lead to the same results: they moderate wages, workers´ effort, effective labor input, and aggregate output. Whether employment rises or falls, however, depends in both reforms on the magnitude of the prereform total tax wedge. We show that this ambiguity stems from the effect tax progression has on the marginal revenue changes of tax and tax exemption changes. This budgetary effect determines the result in the same way in both tax reforms and turns out to be the crucial force in determining the effect the degree of tax progressivity has on employment.

Explaining Government Revenue Windfalls and Shortfalls: An Analysis for Selected EU Countries

In recent years, government revenues in many EU countries experienced significant and erratic changes, which, a priori, could not be fully explained by macroeconomic developments or by discretionary fiscal policy measures. We investigate this issue by estimating “unexplained” changes in tax and social contribution revenues, based on proxies for tax revenue bases and elasticities commonly used for forecasting or cyclically adjusting government revenues and taking into account estimates of the impact of legislation changes. This is done for a selection of EU countries, including the “big five” euro area countries (Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands) together with Ireland, Latvia and Portugal. We also undertake the same exercise using alternative tax base proxies, either taken from forecasting models or on the basis of our knowledge of the tax system in each country. The results show that, in the aggregate, revenue windfalls and shortfalls have exhibited a broadly cyclical pattern, driven mainly by developments in profit-related taxes and, to a somewhat lesser extent, VAT. Other, more structural factors also play a role, such as declining consumption of fuel and tobacco, as well as factors specific to individual countries, such as developments in property markets. The estimated revenue windfalls and shortfalls can explain a substantial proportion of changes in the euro area cyclically adjusted budget balance over the period 1999-2007. Since these unexplained revenue changes have exhibited a largely cyclical character and might therefore be viewed as partly temporary, this highlights the importance of a careful interpretation of fiscal indicators adjusted for the economic cycle. Except in a small number of cases, the results do not change significantly when alternative tax base proxies are used, suggesting that the potential for improving existing indicators by a better matching of taxes to their bases is likely to be limited.

Openness, inequality and poverty: Endowments matter

Using tariffs as a measure of openness, this paper finds consistent evidence that the conditional effects of trade liberalization on inequality are correlated with relative factor endowments. Trade liberalization, measured by changes in tariff revenues, is associated with increases in inequality in countries well-endowed with highly skilled workers and capital or with workers that have very low education levels. Similar, although less robust, results are also obtained when decile data are used instead of the usual Gini coefficients. Taken together, the results are strongly supportive of the factor-proportions theory of trade and suggest that trade liberalization in poor countries where the share of the labor force with little education is high raises inequality. Simulation results also suggest that relatively small changes in inequality as measured by aggregate measures of inequality, like the Gini coefficient, are magnified when estimates are carried out using decile data.

Climate change and tourism – scenario analysis for the Bernese Oberland in 2030

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate possible impacts of climate change on tourism on a regional level and therefore to provide a basis for discussion for tourism destinations.Design/methodology/approachBy means of a statistical analysis of data and a comprehensive desk research, the ecological consequences of climate change on regional level were outlined. In expert workshops, the effects on tourism were discussed and the main challenges for tourism enterprises and destinations were derived.FindingsThe ecological consequences of climate change are shown for the different destinations in the Bernese Oberland. The economic effects on tourism under changed conditions are estimated. The changes in tourism revenue, including adaptation measures, would result in annual losses of approximately 70 million CHF, or about −4 per cent.Research limitations/implicationsThere are many uncertainties regarding climatic development, effects on tourism and adaptability of the industry. In addition, the impacts depend heavily on local conditions and the structure of tourism.Practical implicationsThe paper provides a useful basis for discussion for alpine tourist destinations planning to set climate change and its consequences on the agenda and develop strategies to face these new challenges.Originality/valueThis paper presents an analysis of ecological consequences of climate change and possible implications on tourism on a regional level and points out the challenges as well as possible mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Revenue Diversification in Arkansas Cities: The Budgetary and Tax Effort Impacts

The consequences of revenue shortfalls for cities are particularly dramatic due to the balanced‐budget requirement. Revenue diversification is one method of stabilizing revenue streams because diversified revenue structures can mitigate the revenue fluctuations often associated with single source revenue. Using audited financial reports, this study examines the impact of revenue diversification in Arkansas cities over 10 years. To address the issue of revenue adequacy, this study examines diversification's impact on current year budget changes in revenue and expenditures as well as its impact on tax effort.

The Effects of School District Consolidation on Educational Cost and Quality

We examine the effects of both whole-grade sharing and administrative consolidations of local school districts in Iowa in the 1990s, the majority of which were induced by state fiscal incentives. We find no effects of either sharing or consolidation on the pupil-teacher ratio, enrollments, or dropout rates. In terms of revenues, we find evidence of temporary increases in state aid, as predicted by the state incentives. This increased state aid, however, is not offset by changes in local revenue and thus total revenue increases. We find a corresponding increase in local expenditures, although this increase was smaller than the increase in revenues, resulting in an increased surplus. Although we lack detailed quality data on student outcomes, these findings suggest an absence of efficiency gains from either whole-grade sharing or consolidation.

Long Black: Export Controls as a Means of Addressing Coffee Price Instability

The global coffee market is characterised by repeated long term price declines interspersed with positive spikes. Numerous solutions to the coffee price instability have been suggested. Ultimately, diversification away from coffee production is likely to be necessary, but some form of supply constraint has been proposed as a means of raising incomes for many poor producers in times of significant price falls. Given the demand for coffee is fairly unresponsive to changes in retail prices, limiting production of raw coffee is likely to raise revenues to producers globally and perhaps even to those limiting their production. Without necessarily advocating this approach, in this paper we estimate the likely changes in coffee prices and export revenues under various supply reduction scenarios to provide policy makers with an illustration of the order of magnitude of the benefits that might accrue to coffee exporting countries. Results indicate that, assuming export controls could be implemented as envisaged, a 10 per cent reduction of exports in the four major producing countries is likely to increase world prices by 17 per cent and increase these countries` export revenues by 6 per cent in the long run. Other coffee exporters would increase their exports and therefore would gain proportionally more. Further gains would result from the additional production of alternative crops.