This article used China as an example to study how tax reform affects the innovative behavior of companies. Our research showed that value-added (VAT) can affect corporate innovation behavior. On basis patent-application data Chinese enterprises, we difference-in-differences framework differences in performance industrial enterprises patent applications before and after China’s 2009 VAT reform....

The World Trade Organization (WTO) faces an existential crisis. Nominations to the Appellate Body (AB) are deadlocked; tariffs being raised and retaliated against; substantive negotiations stalled. A number of Members, including European Union (EU or Union) its Member States, convinced that WTO is in need profound reform, inter alia, with a view integrating developing countries further, address...

Pervasive energy subsidies for groundwater pumping pose a challenge for policy makers around the world who cope with lowering water tables from increased reliance on groundwater resources for irrigation. This paper outlines a series of laboratory experiments aimed to study the groundwater extraction decisions of stakeholders under alternative subsidy structures. We propose a model and a methodo...

The objective of the Commonwealth’s Environmental Flows Initiative (EFI) was to assist state and territory water resource agencies meet the COAG Water Reform requirements for making environmental water allocations. The NT received support due in part to the focus on water resource development shifting to Northern Australia and the concurrent lack of understanding about tropical water resources ...

BACKGROUND Open defecation is widely practiced in India. To improve sanitation and promote better health, the Government of India (GOI) has instituted large scale sanitation programmes supporting construction of public and institutional toilets and extending financial subsidies for poor families in rural areas for building individual household latrines. Nevertheless, many household latrines in ...

Ambivalence underlies the U.S. trade policy on government participation in the marketplace. This ambivalence is evidenced by certain trade laws and agreements which are based on competing economic theories that simultaneously sanction free trade principles and government interventionist policies [2]. It is exemplified by certain countervailing duty (CVD) determinations made by the International...

Energy poverty is widespread in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Pacific. It is estimated that 70 percent of Pacific islander households do not have access to electricity, which is equivalent to access rates in sub-Saharan Africa and slightly below the average for low income countries. Pacific SIDS face unique challenges in expanding access to electricity, given that their populatio...

The medical care system in China has experienced significant changes during three decades of reform, and thus result in a need to investigate the effects of medical reform. This paper investigates the technical efficiency of Chinese hospitals in 31 provinces during the period from 2002 to 2013 by proposing a new global generalized directional distance function (GGDDF) approach taking account of...

Policy reforms outside agriculture in the early 1990s accelerated growth in per capita incomes and food demand and also improved the terms of trade for the agriculture. Agricultural policies and institutions, traditionally focused on achieving food grain self sufficiency within a closed economy, have, however, been slow to adapt to a new environment of diversifying demand, more open markets, an...