FISCAL «WARS»IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE GLOBAL DIGITAL ECONOMY FORMATION

Background. Along with increasing share of ICT services in global production and trade, additional possibilities have been provided for MNCs to minimize taxes through transfer pricing mechanisms and controlled international transactions for intangible assets. These processes lead to leaching of financial and investment resources from countries in conditions of extremely high demand for their accumulation. The latest regulatory practices of state governments demonstrate the renaissance of economic nationalism in the form of intensified interstate fiscal competition. The aim of this article is to assess the impact of digitalization of the world economy onto the possibilities of fiscal optimization of the MNC and analysis of the latest regulatory practices of state governments through direction of interstate fiscal competition and fiscal «wars». Materials and methods. The information base of the study was scientific foreign and domestic scholars’ publications; data from analytical companies and statistical services; international organizations. The approaches of normative and positive economics, elements of institutional analysis and Case method were used. Results. The article identifies the impact of digitalization of global trade and production on the processes of optimizing fiscal payments by international companies. Systematization and estimation of certain international regulatory practices on digital trade taxation have been carried out and their content has been identified as new fiscal «wars». Conclusion. Recent fiscal «wars»as a factor influencing the world economy should be recognized as a negative phenomenon based on multifactorial differences between countries caused by economic, political, organizational and diplomatic obstacles.Despite targeted steps, there are currently no preconditions for the accession of all participants in transnational trade, including digital, as a general regulatory act to establish uniform rules for its taxation.

The Challenges of Machine Learning and Their Economic Implications

The deployment of machine learning models is expected to bring several benefits. Nevertheless, as a result of the complexity of the ecosystem in which models are generally trained and deployed, this technology also raises concerns regarding its (1) interpretability, (2) fairness, (3) safety, and (4) privacy. These issues can have substantial economic implications because they may hinder the development and mass adoption of machine learning. In light of this, the purpose of this paper was to determine, from a positive economics point of view, whether the free use of machine learning models maximizes aggregate social welfare or, alternatively, regulations are required. In cases in which restrictions should be enacted, policies are proposed. The adaptation of current tort and anti-discrimination laws is found to guarantee an optimal level of interpretability and fairness. Additionally, existing market solutions appear to incentivize machine learning operators to equip models with a degree of security and privacy that maximizes aggregate social welfare. These findings are expected to be valuable to inform the design of efficient public policies.

The Norwegian Vehicle Electrification Policy and Its Implicit Price of Carbon

The rapid market uptake of battery and hybrid electric cars in Norway is unparalleled. We examine the fiscal policy instruments behind this development. In essence, the Norwegian policy consists in taxing internal combustion engine vehicles rather than subsidizing electric ones. There are 14 different fiscal incentives in place bearing on vehicles, fuel, or road use. All of them are in some way CO2-differentiated. In the tradition of positive economics, we derive the price of carbon implicit in each policy instrument and in the total package of taxes and subsidies. The price of carbon characterizing the trade-off between conventional and battery electric cars in Norway as of 2019 exceeds €1370 per ton of CO2. For light and heavy-duty commercial vehicles the corresponding prices have been conservatively estimated at €640 and €200 per ton of CO2, respectively. In addition, the penalty incurred by automakers for not meeting their 2020/2021 target under EU Regulation 2019/631 corresponds to a carbon price of the order of €340 per ton of CO2. As compared to the price of emission allowances in the European cap-and-trade system, the price of carbon paid by automakers and Norwegian motorists is one or two orders of magnitude higher.

TAX POLICY IN THE ISLAMIC ECONOMY IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES

After dealing with the issue of public revenues and expenditures in the positive economy, we are talking about the role of public revenues and expenditures in the Islamic economy in normal circumstances, which includes the definition of the house of money, its origin, its functions and the relationship between the budget and the house of money in Islam with the definition of the general budget in the positive and Islamic economy, as well as the role of revenues And public expenditures in Islamic economics, and through this comparison between revenues and expenditures in positive economics and Islamic economics, we reach the essential point, which is the advantage of Islamic economics that does not appear to us except by comparing it with other systems. The general budget was also defined in Islamic economics, its origins, its components, and other objectives of the general budget, such as the administrative objective and the planning objective, then from which the needy interests are fulfilled, and then the improvement. And all of this is to gain knowledge of the general purpose of Islamic legislation, which is to achieve the interests of the people in both the immediate and the future, by bringing them benefit and warding off corruption on their behalf.

Positive Economics From the Perspective of Kant's Thought

Departing from Kant's thought, we could argue that the portrait of homo economicus drawn by positive economics corresponds to a homo phainomenon as a heteronomous person of concrete economic reality. In addition, we could try to show that economics could not get rid of naturalism, materialism, and fatalism, justifying Kant's concerns. We could also emphasize that, while in the beginning the aim of being a positive science to be able to produce synthetic a posteriori propositions, positive economics tried to continue its way by the method of synthetic a priori. Finally, we must also point out the possibility for an autonomous or free homo noumenon to establish an original ethos by setting goals for itself.

Ethical Pluralism in Economics

Traditional approaches to understanding morality, through evaluating outcomes, analyzing rules, principles, and duty, and adhering to notions of virtue and character, offer competing but also complementary ways of framing conduct in a social setting. Ethical pluralism is the claim that all three methods are, to some degree, useful to positive economics because each provides distinctive insights into human behavior. Each is also useful in normative economics because a single framework has limitations that are solved by introducing elements from the others. The neoclassical economic approach, concerned ostensibly with outcome goals, must consider how economic agents are motivated by duty and virtue ethics considerations. Adam Smith’s virtue ethics, for example, arise from moral sentiments, not rational calculation. In considering the morality of efficiency, a Paretian approach derives ultimately from Kantian considerations, and the Kaldor-Hicks approach relies on background conditions of human rights and other non-outcome based elements.

Economic Analysis of Law: An Overview

While behavioral insights are vital to any theory of law, they are particularly important as qualifiers of standard economic analysis of law. Standard economic analysis assumes that people are rational maximizers of their own utility. As a normative theory, it ultimately takes into account only human welfare and focuses on maximization of aggregate social utility. This chapter offers a bird’s-eye view of economic analysis of law. It describes the main features of economic analysis in general, with a focus on positive economics, followed by a description of the tenets of the normative branch of economic analysis known as welfare economics.