Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: Maxwell Stinchcombe and R. Preston McAfee. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Univ., Diss.--Toulouse, 2002.

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Business opportunities are a chance for a company to grow its activity and to further the aggregate welfare of the society as a whole. Corporate opportunities rules and their functional equivalents should enable companies to develop their business activities when directors discover those business opportunities. Companies need to be certain that they can legally appropriate those business opportunities. A company should have this ability when it is the best potential exploiter of the opportunity at issue, which is likely when the opportunity is a chance to expand the company's line of business or to pursue vertical integration. In fact, a company's appropriation of new business opportunities justifies a company's sunk costs that stem from its specific investments. Hence, the tests adopted for identifying corporate opportunities in US (Delaware), German (line of business test), UK, French, Spanish and Italian corporate laws (interest test) reflect the need to further efficiency by way of diminishing hold-up costs. Remedies against misappropriations of corporate opportunities by directors should both pursue maximum disclosure of new corporate opportunities by directors and preserve the possibility of alternative allocations of a corporate opportunity, when a company's director can exploit the opportunity more efficiently than the company. Such an alternative allocation may occur through negotiation or through efficient breach of duty. It is suggested that a differential remedial system (higher sanctions for breach of duty following non-disclosure) would maximize both disclosure and efficient allocation. This approach is closer to the one that exists in Anglo-American law than to the one adopted in most civil law jurisdictions. The present differences in various corporate laws may be connected to the existence of institutional complementarities, which should be taken into account in future reforms.

For several years, the literature has discussed whether a country’s particular economic circumstances should be taken into account in competition law and policy design. This thesis discusses whether economic growth should be considered as the guiding principle for Latin American Emerging Economies’ competition law and policy design. It specifically explains why having economic growth as competition policy’s guiding principle makes a difference in choosing superior rules and standards, among the large range of efficient rules. In order to explain how economic growth as a guiding principle has an impact on competition policy design, this thesis studies whether the analysis and application of the prohibitions and standards of abuse of dominance in emerging Latin American economies are appropriate, and why, having regard to economic growth, a different approach might be justified. To engage in the study of such questions this thesis centres on the regulation of dominance and the law governing abuse of dominance, in particular on predatory pricing and excessive pricing. After a careful analysis of such institutions, an optimal rule for the regulation of pricing abuses in these emerging economies is proposed. Similarly, having regard to economic growth as the policy’s guiding principle, the mainstream standards on excessive pricing and price predation are evaluated and a different approach is found to be justified. It is concluded that economic growth should be the principle guiding Latin American emerging economies’ competition law and policy design and it is demonstrated that this will grant these economies policy soundness and identity.

Political structures and the evolution of late capitalism in liberal Western democracies lend a common frame to the development of national media systems. However, whereas media policy from the post-war period to the mid-1980s was largely driven by socio-political concerns and coextensive with policy for public service television, this model has been vehemently challenged. Key factors were the convergence of erstwhile-separated industries and infrastructures, as well as the ambitions of the corporate sector and governments alike, to benefit from the economic opportunities offered by the communications revolution. By assessing the changing relationship between the role of the state, economic structures and technological innovation, this research investigates these processes in the UK and Germany. Both countries have the two key public service systems but also feature striking differences such as the antithetic political systems and democratic processes (majoritarian vs. consensus democracy). The basic assumption suggests that a genuine understanding of contemporary developments is only possible if political/economic as well as historic/sociological perspectives are incorporated into the holistic approach applied. Thereby this study gives consideration to key processes and events which have determined transitions between communications policy paradigms and regulatory regimes. Given the Anglo-Saxon tradition of regulating, key processes and events in the UK are often indicated by the appointment and report of a committee of enquiry. For the purpose of this study the most crucial of these is the Committee on Financing the BBC (1986), which first applied market-driven politics onto British broadcasting, and whose recommendations still serve as a blueprint for current communications policy-making. In Germany the KtK Report (1974) formed the basis for decisive reforms in broadcasting and communications. Apart from that, however, Germany features the characteristic of administering state interventions in as detailed a manner as possible through legislation. Of central importance are, therefore, the rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court, which continuously set decisive parameters for the development of the broadcasting system. The thesis follows two driving themes which have been identified as crucial in terms of the comparative dimension and are elaborated continuously in more detail. First, the focus is on the interdependencies between public and private sector. Second, implications and responses of the central vis-à-vis federal characteristic of state formation are investigated. In doing so, the thesis draws on vast sources of archival documents as well as exclusive material from a series of elite interviews with a purposively-selected sample of very high-level sources, including Chairmen, Director-Generals, ministers, very senior civil servants and so on. The thesis demonstrates how communications policy-making is carried out in both countries and how these processes are determined by national regulatory frameworks which are rooted within the borders of the nation state. As such the research findings have broader implications for commercial and public sector regulation.

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which the laws and policies governing labour migration shape the relationship between migrant workers, employers, and labour markets in advanced industrialised countries. Specifically, it elucidates the intersections of immigration and labour market regulatory norms, structures, and processes that have salient implications for migrants’ work relations. The notions of ‘hyper-dependence’ and ‘hyper-precarity’ are developed as the main analytical and normative lenses in this thesis for examining the particular vulnerabilities associated with migrants’ precarious statuses under contemporary labour migration regimes. Hyper-dependence refers to an acute dependence that transcends the immediate context of an employment relationship, where other aspects of a worker’s life critically depend on that employer. For migrant workers, hyper-dependence may arise where their legal statuses is tethered to a specific employer sponsorship, accompanied by other de jure and de facto restrictions on their labour mobility. Hyper-precarity seeks to capture the multifaceted insecurities and uncertainties in migrants’ work relations and their broader migration projects, which are linked to their exclusion, in law and in practice, from a wide array of social, economic, and civil rights in the host state. Engaging with the various and often competing goals and concerns of immigration law and labour law, the two concepts of hyper-dependence and hyper-precarity are developed and applied through an in-depth comparative analysis of the legal and regulatory architectures of two contemporary temporary migrant workers’ programmes (TMWPs): Australia’s Temporary Work (Skilled) Subclass 457 Visa (‘457 visa’) scheme and the United Kingdom’s Tier 2 (General) visa scheme. In recent years, TMWPs in advanced industrialised countries have been touted by global and national policymakers as a desirable labour migration instrument that delivers ‘triple wins’ for host states, home states, and migrants and their families. I situate the normative concerns of the legally constructed hyper-dependence and hyper-precarity in the ethical debates on TMWPs in liberal states. I also consider how the worst extremes of the two ‘hyper’ conditions combined in highly exploitative work relations could be ameliorated, and in doing so propose some ideas for reforming key features of current TMWPs to enable migrants to exit any employment relationship and to resort to a range of voice mechanisms in the workplace.

Morocco is oftentimes praised by academics, development workers, and women’s rights activists as a trailblazer for the empowerment of women in the Middle East and North African region. Its reforms in the realm of family legislation and progress made in human development place the country at the helm of liberalising Arab Muslim-majority societies, even more so after the Arab Spring and Morocco’s peaceful transition to a ‘new’ constitutional order. However, a closer look at women’s rights discourses, legal reforms, its texts and implementation, and the public attitudes towards the enhancement of women’s rights reveals a less empowering situation. The purported goals of the Family Code, as the extolled document showcasing Morocco’s attempt at ameliorating (married) women’s rights, of ‘doing justice to women’ while ‘preserving men’s dignity’ mask the reformed law’s reconsolidation of patriarchal family relations. Many legal grey areas within this particular law, as well as clashing principles emanating from other laws such as the Penal Code, allow judges and the ʿaduls (religious notaries) to exercise discretion and apply the law as they see fit and, to a large extent, as it conforms to their and the community’s vision of the ideal moral order. Moreover, because ‘doing justice to women’ affects men’s and family’s honour, the project of the enhancement of women’s rights has had as a result retraditionalisation of family relations and hierarchical gender structures. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the status of educated single adult girls from provincial areas. They may be poster girls for the development community, but they are pitied by their own communities because they fail to become complete women––married (non-employed) mothers. The story of Morocco’s professed progress is a story of empowering its citizens, but one which does so on paper only. It is also a story which hides the salient details of poorly written reformed laws, obstructed access to justice, continuing widespread misogyny, material poverty and social marginalisation, and cohesive socio-economic programmes, which are rarely followed through.

The main objective of the study was to analyze the potential tax collection from the informal rental housing market in Zambia, using household level rental housing data collected for the Lusaka Urban District by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) as a basis for computation and extrapolation to the national level. This data was used to analyze household monthly expenditure on housing (rent), the total number of households in rented accommodation, and the tax regime applicable on rental income, to estimate the potential tax revenue that could be realized from this emerging sector. The estimates indicate that about K9.7 billion revenue could be collected on income from rental housing in Lusaka Urban District alone and a total of K83 billion nationally per annum. This represents about 0.4 percent of the country’s GDP in 2007. Compliance needs to be improved and legislation revised to ensure that the landlords are compelled to remit tax to the Zambia Revenue Authority. The current legislation makes enforcement and compliance difficult as it places the statutory tax burden on tenants, who are very mobile. It is, therefore, recommended that the landlord is made responsible for the payment of taxes due on rental income and that any compliance requirements be enforced against the real estate/property that is generating the income. This study also examines the performance of the presumptive taxation regime in Zambia The study uses data from the Zambia Revenue Authority on revenue collection from presumptive taxes which were introduced to capture income from the informal sectors. The presumptive taxes already introduced in Zambia include: base tax, advance income tax and turnover tax for minibuses and taxi operators. To analyze the performance of the presumptive tax regime, the study utilizes data on imports made by those not registered for taxes, to estimate how much revenue could be generated by imposing a 3 percent turnover tax on the value of their imports at importation. The analysis shows that the Zambia Revenue Authority increased revenue collection from K5.3 billion in 2004 to K33.5 billion in 2007. This improvement in revenue collection is far below the potential, however, which is estimated at over K501 billion on imports of unregistered traders alone. To collect this revenue and expand the tax base, the tax authority needs to improve the administration of advance income tax on unregistered importers, and raise the advance income tax rate to a level where the importer is indifferent between paying the advance tax at the border and paying turnover tax inland.

The genesis of the informal sector in Mozambique is similar to the way it emerged in many other countries in the world, starting mainly with small businesses performed by unemployed people, peasent families, street vendors among others as their self employment. The informal sector offers a striking illustration of the strengths and weakness of enterprises in Mozambique. A simple and transparent legal framework, properly enforced is indispensable for the long term success of the informal sector to turn to formal sector. Taxation is controversary in the informal sector. The existing tax system in Mozambique is distorced and naturally contribute to a host of economic and social problems. The needed for the reform of taxation system has been acknowledged for instance the recent implementation of VAT system in Mozambique still on process of implementation. Taxes generated by the informal sector could contribute to the budget of the State. / Mercantile Law / LL.M.