How Does Tax Aggressiveness Affect Shareholder Wealth? An Examination Using a Regulatory Transition

We examine the relation between tax aggressiveness and firm value. Using a tax enforcement change in Taiwan that limits firms’ abilities to pursue aggressive tax strategies, we document that the relation between tax aggressiveness and firm value becomes more negative after the regulatory change. Further analyses reveal that the negative change is more pronounced for firms that are more likely to be targeted by the stricter tax enforcement. In addition, we do not find strong evidence on the impact of corporate governance in moderating the main relation. Our results seem to be consistent with the argument that potential increases in regulatory costs may outweigh the benefit of the stricter tax enforcement in constraining insiders’ income diversion, intensifying the conflict between aggressive tax positions and shareholder wealth in our research setting.

Ontology and Logic of Processes

Among the two (substantial and procedural) rival views on the outside world, preference was historically given to the substantial point of view. The success of Aristotle’s logic was due to the simple substantial ontology built by him. In that logic, the subject is characterized by an instant set of properties. The change of objects leads to the change of properties. The reduction of processes to substances causes a number of problems. The construction of procedural logic should be started with the construction of the most abstract procedural ontology. The main difference of processes from substances is their extension. Each item, as a process, can be considered as a bundle of parallel processes. The relation the individual S has the property P is the main relation in the substantial ontology. In the procedural ontology, one of the main ones is the relation process R is a sub-process of the process Q. This relation is sufficient for the interpretation of the main syllogistic constants. As a result, we get Łukasiewicz syllogistic for reasoning about parallel processes. The extension of the processes allows us to talk about their parts. The second main relation of procedural ontology is the relation process P consists of two successive processes Q and R. If the processes Q and R are successive, it is natural to make use of the relation earlier-later. In procedural ontology, time does not emerge through external postulation but exists within it. In the ontology of processes, one can naturally define the concept of causality, which becomes a logical concept. However, the success of the procedural view of the outside world is only possible if the new ways of reasoning prove to be a more effective tool for intellectual cognitive activity than the existing ones.

Alternative Relations and Higher-Level Categories

Alternative relations are one of the main relation types between states of affairs and disjunctions are the dedicated morphosyntactic constructions used for encoding them. The standard approach to disjunctions, which assumes two readings, Inclusive and Exclusive, has recently been challenged. A fundamental requirement, shared by the alternatives in all the readings they identified, is that they must be construable as members of a single higher-level category. This requirement also defines specifically one of the readings of disjunctions, or or constructions, HLC (the Higher-level category reading), in which the explicit disjuncts serve only as a means for constructing, often only ad-hoc, a higher-level concept. This concept, rather than the explicit alternatives, is actually the prominent concept profiled by the construction. The study presented here adopts the same bottom-up Usage-Based approach advocated by Ariel and Mauri, and examines the Hebrew or constructions of the Old Testament, given in the Masoretic Tiberian version. It focusses on the question of how those categories are constructed. The data was analyzed adopting a comparative linguistic and textual method, and taking into consideration different philological and diachronic aspects. It reveals that HLC (such as ‘any beast’ for ox or ass, Exodus 23, 4) is the most common reading in this corpus (108/319, 34%). Interestingly, the higher-level categories are extracted from disjuncts of various parts of speech and can be explicit, but in most cases they are inferred. Furthermore, we observe cases which almost equally profile both the single, higher-level category and the alternatives. The methodology adopted revealed some linguistic changes in progress, as well as inclinations of ancient biblical editors and jurists.

Fuzzy scales for the measurement of color

The color, with the particularity to be defined simultaneously as a physical quantity and as a psychophysical quantity, is one of the concepts that can link hard sciences and behavioural sciences. From the viewpoint of behavioural sciences, colors are basically measured with nominal scales. in hard sciences, colors are measured with interval scales. Our hypothesis is that the main relation that must be preserved during a color measurement is a metric. We suggest then that colors must be measured with metrical scales. The fuzzy metrical scale is preferred due to the possibility to define it like a nominal scale.

An Increase of the Character Function of Self-Directedness Is Centrally Involved in Symptom Reduction during Remission from Major Depression

Background. Studies with the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) in depressive disorders have shown changes (Δ) of the character of Self-Directedness (SD) and the temperament of Harm Avoidance (HA). The central question of this study is which of these two changes is most proximally related to the production of depressive symptoms.Methods. The start and endpoint data from a two-year followup of 58 depressed patients were reanalyzed. We used the ΔHA and ΔSD scores as well as the Δ scores on three dimensions of psychopathology, called Emotional Dysregulation (ED), Retardation (RET), and Anxiety (ANX). The presence of the main relation between personality and psychopathology was tested in all patients and in four subcategories. The data were analyzed by MANCOVA and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).Results. ΔHA and ΔSD correlated negatively, and only ΔSD was related (negatively) to ΔED. This pattern was found in all subcategories. SEM showed ΔHA and ΔSD had an ambiguous causal interrelationship, while ΔSD, ΔRET, and ΔANX had unidirectional effects on ΔED.Conclusion. The results correspond with a central pathogenetic role for a state-related deficit at the character level in depression. This may have important consequences for investigations of endophenotypes and clinical treatment.