This thesis is dealing with development and analysis of value added tax rates and income tax rates in developed countries. Developed countries are member states of European Union and member states of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Standard value added tax rates are analysed during period 1971 till 2011 for both formations with following comparison. The development of corporate tax rates is observed from 1981 to 2011 again for both formations with comparison afterwards. For the same period of time are analysed free marginal rates of personal income tax but only within OECD. Next can be found analysis and comparisons of rates mentioned above from seven chosen states including the Czech Republic. In the final part, the development of tax rates in chosen states with respect to the development of GDP in these states is presented. The development in chosen states is surveyed for the period 1981-2011.

No description available.

This thesis named "Anti-Americanism and Canadian Cultural Policy (1928-1957)" examines how Canadian federal government cultural policies were influenced by a specific form of anti-Americanism, which reflected concerns over Americanization and cultural absorption by the United States, in this formative period for the development of a distinct national identity during the time of Canada's colony-to-nation transition. The chosen research design is interpretative content analysis of the reports of two Canadian royal commissions commonly known as the Aird Commission (1928-1929) and the Massey Commission (1949-1951). The aim of this thesis is to identify the main factors and incentives for a policy of government intervention in the field of culture and to assess the role of anti-Americanism as a response to what was perceived as American cultural invasion that threatened the development of a distinct Canadian culture. The theoretical framework contains a discussion about different forms of anti-Americanism, with emphasis on its unique nature in Canada, and introduces the concept of cultural imperialism which helps us to better understand Canadian opposition to American cultural influences in the examined period.

This thesis is focused on an analysis of British-Canadian relations in 1921-1930, ie. mostly the first two terms of office of the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who significantly contributed to the change of relations of the oldest British dominion and his mother country. The thesis analyses the position of Canada towards Great Britain and the influence of the then British and Canadian government on the development of mutual relations, which have gone through important changes and led to the greater measure of Canadian independence in the chosen period. Specifically, the thesis will focus on the context of key international events, which had an impact on the British-Canadian relations: the Chanak crisis, the Halibut Treaty between Canada and the United States of America, the King-Byng affair (1926), the Imperial Conference of 1926 and the Canadian activity in the League of Nations.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate to what extent Canada and Alberta have been fulfilling the principles of sustainable development as they have adopted in the 1990s from the essential U.N. documents - the Brundtland Report and the Rio Declaration- and to what extent both governments failed in providing and enforcing efficient environmental law protection as it is the basic premise for achieving sustainability. I assessed this level of sustainability in Canada and Alberta on the basis of a stronger and weaker sustainability theoretical framework. Author's presumption was that Canada, as it defined sustainable development in its legislation, acted according to stronger sustainability, which emphasizes stronger protective environmental measures. Given a very large scope of environmental impacts of oil extraction on different ecosystems, the sector of water resources was selected to serve as a case study to compare and analyze government and alternative reports assessing the sustainability of water management. Thus, the author follows how the oil industry in Alberta affects the water resources and how both governments of Canada and Alberta provide environmental protection to the water resources. In this respect the author illustrates how the government is reluctant towards the implementation of...

Asymmetry and executive federalism are two unique features that dominate the Canadian political landscape. As a result, federal and provincial governments are in direct negotiations over many current public policy issues, immigration policy notwithstanding. In order to understand the current immigration debate and to evaluate the benefits of greater provincial involvement, it is first necessary to comprehend what motivates provinces to be active in immigration policy-making. Ontario presents an interesting example of a province that used to be quite content with leaving the federal government dominant in the immigration arena but that has recently changed its attitude completely: Ontario is now much more assertive in presenting its demands. Through a comprehensive literature review and a series of interviews of key immigration policy figures, this study analyzes the main motives of Ontario with respect to immigration policy. It finds that they were primarily of economic, demographic, and political nature and that they were mainly connected to the relative decline of Ontario's position within Canada.

In its relatively unchanged form and effective for nearly 140 years the Indian Act of 1876 is the basic law governing the rights and responsibilities of First Nations and their status within Canada. The law protects the special status of Indigenous groups in Canadian society albeit it has been criticized as discriminatory. Voices calling for change of the legislation are growing stronger with the deepening socio-economic problems of Aboriginal peoples. First Nations primarily require the assertion of their constitutional right to self-determination in any future reform. In contrast, the current Conservative government of Stephen Harper emphasizes self- sufficiency and financial responsibility of Native peoples. Legislative actions that Conservatives rarely consult with representatives of the Indigenous peoples themselves correspond to the general priorities of the Harper Government based on the principles of market economy and do not reflect the demands for self-determination and self-government of Indigenous communities. The Idle No More protest movement founded in 2012 in reaction to some of Harper's laws pertaining to Aboriginal peoples fights for their rights and environmental protection inextricably linked with their identity. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze different perspectives on...

Als Folge der seit Ende der 1960er Jahre gestiegenen Auslandsverschuldung avancierte der Export der DDR in das NSW zur Schicksalsfrage. Zu den ausfuhrintensivsten, Finalerzeugnisse herstellenden Branchen, mit einem kontinuierlichen Absatz im NSW zählte, neben dem Druckmaschinenbau vor allem der Werkzeugmaschinenbau. Zu beiden Branchen fehlen bislang dementsprechende Untersuchungen. Die vorliegende Arbeit schließt also eine Forschungslücke! Zwei Dinge waren entscheidend für den im Gegensatz zu anderen Branchen der DDR kontinuierlichen Absatz von Werkzeugmaschinen in das NSW: Erstens der Wille der DDR, Geschäfte in Form von Ware gegen Waren zu tätigen, um auf diese Weise Devisen zu sparen. Zweitens politische Aspekte. Weiterhin war es möglich den DDR-Werkzeugmaschinenbau in die weltweite Entwicklung des Werkzeugmaschinenbaus einzuordnen. Zur globalen Einordnung kommt diejenige auf den jeweiligen nationalen Märkten. Während Betrachtungen zur Wirtschaft der DDR gemeinhin von einer pauschalen Wettbewerbsschwäche der Wirtschaft der DDR sprechen, ohne die branchenspezifischen Probleme genauer zu betrachten, differenziert die vorliegende Arbeit stärker nach einzelnen Ursachen. Erstens die seit 1973 in immer kürzeren Abständen auftretenden zyklischen Wirtschaftskrisen, die der metallverarbeitenden Industrie, besonders der zivilen, schwer zusetzten. Bis schließlich im Jahr 1982 die Märkte im NSW beinahe vollständig zusammenbrachen, was sowohl zu einer verschärften Preispolitik als auch zur Abschottung der nationalen Märkte mittels Protektionismus führte. Zweitens technische und qualitative Probleme. Dazu gehörten neben der nicht wettbewerbsfähigen Elektrik vor allem die nicht konkurrenzfähigen mikroelektronischen Steuerungen. Drittens scheiterten auch die in den, im Vergleich zur westeuropäischen Konkurrenz ohnehin zu spät generierten Anlagenexport, gesetzten Hoffnungen. Sowohl der Irak als auch die Türkei, als die beiden größten Abnehmer von Anlagen, gerieten, wenn auch aus unterschiedlichen Gründen, in immer schwierigeres Fahrwasser. / As a consequence of the growing foreign indebtedness since the late 1960s, the export of the German Democratic Republik (GDR) into the western markets became a question of to be or not to be. One of the most competitive sector of industry, producing final industrial goods, was, beside printing machine industry, the east german machine tool industry. Researches about their exports are still missing until today. That means the present work closes a gap of research! Two things were decisive for a continuously sale of east german machine tools into the western markets: First the will of the GDR to deal wares against wares to save foreign currencies. The international competition of the east german machine tools was a precondition to be used as an exchange currency. Seconds political reasons. Furthermor it was possible to put the east german machine tool industry in its worldwide proper place. Beside the worldwide comparison it was possible to analyse the national marketparts of the GDRs machine tool industry. While views on the east german economy talk about a lack of competition in general, without looking at the specific problems of the respective industry branch the present work distinguishes between single reasons: First the shorter intervals of the economical crises since 1973 that caused damages especially in the civil metal processing. In 1982 the western markets nearly went in totally decline, what caused an aggravate prize policy an d the closing of the national markets by protctionism. Second technical an qualitative problems. Third the too late generated export of plants connected with economical troubles of the two main importers, Iraq and Turkey.

The variety of middle-class speakers in St. John’s conforms to some degree to mainland Canadian-English pronunciation norms, but in complex and distinctive ways (Clarke, 1985, 1991, 2010; D’Arcy, 2005; Hollett, 2006). One as yet unresolved question is whether speakers of this variety participate in the Canadian Shift (cf. Clarke, 2012; Chambers, 2012), a chain shift of the lax front vowels that has been confirmed for many different regions of Canada (e.g. Roeder and Gardner, 2013, for Thunder Bay and Toronto, Sadlier-Brown and Tamminga, 2008, for Halifax and Vancouver). While acoustic phonetic analyses of St. John’s English are rare, some claims have been made that urban St. John’s speakers do not participate in the shift, based on two or six speakers (Labov, Ash & Boberg, 2006; Boberg 2010). Other researchers with larger data sets suggest that younger St. John’s speakers participate in mainland Canadians innovations to different degrees than mainlanders (e.g. Hollett, 2006). The Canadian Shift has not been uniformly defined, but agreement exists that with the low-back merger in place, BATH/TRAP retracts and consequently DRESS lowers. Clarke et al. (1995), unlike Labov et al. (2006), assert that KIT is subsequently lowered. Boberg (2005, 2010), however, emphasizes retraction of KIT and DRESS and suggests unrelated parallel shifts instead. In this PhD thesis, I demonstrate the presence of the Canadian Shift in St. John’s, NL, conforming to Clarke et al.’s (1995) original proposal. In my stratified randomly-sampled data (approx. 10,000 vowels, 34 interviewees, stratified as to age, gender, socioeconomic status, and “local-ness”), results from Euclidean distance measures, correlation coefficients, and linear, as well as logistic, mixed-effects regression show that (1) young St. John’s speakers clearly participate in the shift; and that (2) age has the strongest and a linear effect. Continuous modeling of age yields even more significant results for participation in a classic chain shift (6% decrease in lowering per added year). My findings also confirm that the change seems to have entered the system via formal styles (cf. Clarke, 1991, 2010, for TRAP in St. John’s). Traditionally, the linguistic homogeneity on a phonetic level of the Canadian middle class has been explained by Canada’s settlement and migration patterns of the North American Loyalists from Ontario to the west (cf. Chambers, 2009). Newfoundland’s settlement is distinct, in that the British and the Irish were the only two relevant sources. If settlement were the only crucial reason for a shared pronunciation of Canada’s middle class from Vancouver to St. John’s, the Canadian Shift should be absent in the latter region. I suggest three reasons for middle-class St. John’s’ participation in the Canadian Shift: 1) Newfoundland’s 300-year-old rural-urban divide as a result of its isolation, through which British/Irish features are attributed to rural und lower social class speakers; 2) the development of the oil industry since the 1990’s, through which social networks changed according to the perception of social distance/closeness; and 3) the importance of the linguistic marketplace, which is high in St. John’s due to 1) and 2).

John B. Taylor, professor i nationalekonomi vid Stanford University, presenterade år 1993 en penningpolitisk regel som syftade till att vara ett hjälpmedel för centralbanker vid räntebeslut. Taylor-regeln är mycket enkel i sitt uförande och baseras på att styrräntan bör sättas efter två variabler: BNP-gapet och inflationsavvikelsen. Denna styrränteregel fick genomslag inom den vetenskapliga världen men spreds även till makroekonomisk praktik och medförde stora förändringar för penningpolitiken. Flera empriska studier har publicerats sedan Taylor-regeln tillkom och det råder det delade meningar om hur väl Taylor-regeln presterar för olika typer av ekonomier och hur användbar den är idag. Det har även uppkomit nya teorier angående trögheten i effekterna av styrränteförändringar och vid vilken tidpunkt dessa får en inverkan på inflationstakten. Syftet med denna uppsats är att jämföra hur väl den ursprungliga Taylor-modellen och en tidslaggad modell förklarar centralbankernas historiska styrräntesättning i fem länder med inflationsmål under tidsperioden 2000-2013. Analysen av resultaten görs med utgångspunkt i ländernas olika ekonomiska egenskaper samt tidsperioden som studien omfattar. Studien begränsas till jämförelser av de två Taylor-modellernas tillämpbarhet vid styrräntesättningar för länderna Brasilien, Kanada, Polen, Sverige och Sydafrika. De två modellerna modifieras också med en styrränteutjämningsfunktion.   Våra resultat tyder på att den ursprungliga Taylor-regeln presterar bättre i förhållande till den tidslaggade modellen när det gäller att förklara den faktiska styrräntesättningen idag för alla länder i studien utom Polen. Den tidslaggade presterar dock bättre än den ursprungliga för de utvecklade ekonomierna Sverige och Kanada under 1990-talet. Båda modellerna gör kraftiga över- och underskattningar som till stor del avhjälps med den utjämningsfunktion som vi tillämpar. Koefficienterna hålls konstanta över hela tidsperioden, vilket inte är rimligt då en viss dynamik bör inkluderas så att regeln justeras efter varje period då för mycket vikt läggs vid BNP-variabeln som såldes är en bidragande faktor till regelns över- och underskattningar. Regeln presterar bättre för ekonomier med stabila förhållanden mellan tillväxttakt och inflationstakt än för länder som lider av mer volatila förhållanden mellan dessa två variabler, likt tillväxtländerna i vår studie. Dessutom ger Taylor-regeln skattningar som ligger närmre den faktiska styrräntesättningen under de tidigare delarna av perioden för att sedan till större del börja avvika från den faktiskt satta styrräntan.   Slutsatserna som kan dras utifrån våra resultat är att den ursprungliga Taylor-regeln presterar bäst i att beskriva ett lands styrräntesättning sett till kvantitativa mått medan en tidslaggad modell tar större hänsyn faktiska förhållanden. Över lag presterar modellerna bättre för de utvecklade ekonomierna än för tillväxtekonomierna och huruvida storleken på ekonomin har någon inverkan är svårt att avgöra. Resultaten tyder också på att Taylor-regeln med tidslagg ligger närmre den faktiska styrräntesättningen för de utvecklade ekonomierna under 1990-talet än under perioden 2000-2013 medan den ursprungliga presterar bättre idag. / John. B Taylor, professor of Economics at Stanford University, presented a monetary policy rule in 1993 which intended to help central banks with their interst rate decisions. In its design the Taylor-rule was very simple and based on only two variables: the GDP-gap and the deviation of actual inflation from the inflation target. The Taylor rule had a great impact on the academic research and also contributed to changes within monetary policy around the world. Many empirical studies have been published on the Taylor rule and there are divided contentions about its applicability in different kind of economies and its relevance today. New theories have also been published regardning the time aspect of the impact on inflation due to a change in the interest rate. The intentions of this study is to make a comparsion between the original Taylor rule and a Taylor rule including a time lag regarding how well they describe the actual interest rates set by the central banks in five countries during the period 2000-2013. The results will be analyzed under consideration of the different economies attributes. The study compares the two kinds of Taylor rules and the applicability in describing the historical interest rate in Brazil, Canada, Poland, Sweden and South Africa. The two rules have also been modified with an interest rate smoothing-function.   Our results conclude that the original Taylor rule describes the historical interest rate better than the rule including a time lag for the time period 2000-2013 for all countries apart from Poland. For the developed economies Canada and Sweden the time lagged model show less deviations for the 1990’s. However both rules tend to over and underestimate the valutation of the interest rate. The smoothing function does to some extent correct this problem. The coefficients of the variables are held constant during the study which in reality should not be the case. They should instead be adjusted between every period to make allowances for the different relationship of the two variables. Mostly too much weight is put on the GDP-variable which should be a contributing cause of the overestimations. The rules do however have the tendency to describe the historical interst rate of the developed economies superior to the developing economies. The performance is greater at the beginning of the period with less deviation from the actual outcome than later on. The conclusion of our study is that the original Taylor rule generally performs superior to the one including time lag with conciderations to the deviations from the actual interest rates. However, the Taylor rule including the time-lag does allow for actual circumstances which the original Taylor rule does not take into consideration. Mainly the rules do perform better for developed economies compared to developing economies. Regarding the impact of the size of the economy on the applicability of the rules it was difficult to conclude anything specific. The Taylor rule with the time-lag is more applicable for the developed economies during the earlier time period, the 1990’s, than the later time period, the 2000’s where the original Taylor rule shows less deviations.