Spearheaded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there has been a rethinking of macroeconomic policies, in particular with regard to targeting inflation at a very low level in the wake of 2008–2009 global economic crisis. We provide a content analysis of the IMF Staff Reports on Article IV consultation of 12 Asian developing countries during the period 2009–2010 in order to see whether that rethinking has been reflected in the IMF’s advice. The findings of this study reveal that the IMF continues with its prescription of achieving low inflationary environment irrespective of country-specific circumstances.

Tax evasion can be considered as a systemic fraud in which different parties such as taxpayers, lawyers, banks, and multinational entities interact. Here, accountants are key agents owing to their legal liability in tax reporting and their knowledge on accounting rules. The present study analyzes the role that accountants play in firms tax evasion by presenting evidence from a randomized field experiment carried out with microenterprises in Ecuador’s tax system in early 2016. The article evaluates to what extent a notification of accountants is more effective in increasing tax reporting than a notification of taxpayers, through five different treatments. The results show that simultaneous persuasive notifications of both accountants and taxpayers were the unique treatment that significantly increased firms’ declared income tax. Furthermore, it was shown that penalty notifications of accountants, rather than taxpayers only, were the most significant treatment at reducing revenue underreporting.

This study explores the effects of consumers’ beliefs about labels on chicken. We elicit beliefs associated with seven different labels. By varying the presence/absence of labels in a choice experiment, we are able to determine the effects of labels on consumer choices and decompose the value of labels into beliefs and base utility. Health perceptions have the largest positive effect, and impacts of animal welfare vary by information treatment. We explore the convergent validity of our approach by comparing individual’s beliefs to responses to a best-worst scaling question, which were weakly correlated, suggesting the two approaches are measuring different constructs.

Joseph Brennan, as secretary of the Irish Department of Finance (1923–7) and chair of the Irish Currency Commission (1927–43), was a pivotal influence on Irish banking and currency affairs. Yet, within the existing literature, his adherence to conservative British norms is seen as providing a ‘bleak prescription’ for the Irish economy. However, such a view ignores the fact that Brennan was far from dogmatic on banking and currency issues and underplays his incrementalist, and often internationalist, approach to the development of Irish monetary institutions. Brennan's actions up to the early 1940s were based on the realities of Ireland's slowly receding economic and intellectual dependency on Britain, a ‘dependency’ often misrepresented in the existing literature as a more primitive, pre-Keynesian, conservative approach. However, rather than acting as a restraining influence on Irish economic development, the policies Brennan advocated enabled Ireland to avoid the instability associated with many smaller, emerging nation states in the 1920s and 1930s. The focus on continuity – which guaranteed currency and banking stability – represented the realities of Ireland's reliance on the sluggish British economy in the decades after independence. Brennan's achievement, in helping to sustain banking and currency stability notwithstanding economic uncertainty, a fragile political environment (and suspicious banking interests), deserves wider acknowledgement.

Determinants of prices of 1,302 weanling Thoroughbreds sold at the 2010 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale are investigated. A hedonic pricing model is adopted to identify price determinants, and the corresponding marginal values of those determinants are estimated. Prices were responsive to pedigree quality variables, including the sire's stud fee, the stage of the sire's breeding career, and whether the dam or the dam's progeny had earned “black type.” In addition, individual weanling characteristics such as gender, age, state of birth, and sale placement influenced price. Results can be used as a decision tool by both buyers and sellers.

As national and local economies become more globalized, many rural areas are going to find it more difficult to compete for private capital investments. A traditional tool, modifications to tax policy, of state and local governments will not be as effective (for many communities it has never been effective) in the future. These communities will need to seek other avenues of growth. However, for many rural communities even alternative avenues will not lead to enhanced economic opportunity.

The «rentas provinciales» were a group of indirect taxes that provided an important part of the Spanish fiscal revenues. This taxes were criticized specially for being a constraint upon economic development. Several studies abaut «rentas provinciales» have used net revenues, in most cases not distributed among the twenty-two Castile provinces. This article shows gross revenues, administrative costs and net revenues obtained from «relaciones generales de valores» made by «administradores generales de las provincias», available at Archivo General de Simancas. Using this data, it is possible to obtain new conclusions about the quantitative evolution of this taxes and about its influence in the economic growth of the Castile Crown in XVIIIth-century.