Research Outputs
Projects with Birmingham Business School involvement
Attitudes to wealth taxes: new public attitude survey data. Briefing paper by Karen Rowlingson, Andy Lymer and Rajiv Prabhakar (January 2015)
The majority of people in the UK support the proposed ‘mansion tax’, according to research published by CHASM in January 2015. But more than half of those surveyed do not think there should be any tax on inheritance. A survey of more than 2,000 adults in the UK, commissioned by CHASM and carried out by TNS, asked respondents how they felt about four potential tax changes: the introduction of a mansion tax; council tax reform; capital gains tax reform; and the re-introduction of a 50% top rate of income tax. They were then asked for their views on inheritance tax before being given the opportunity to give their perceptions of wealth inequality in the UK. The survey found that:
- The mansion tax is the most popular of the proposed reforms, with 53% strongly supporting or tending to support a 1% tax on properties worth more than £2 million. 22% oppose it, with 21% unsure either way.
- Support for a mansion tax is strongest in Scotland, Wales, the North East and Yorkshire/Humberside.
- Less than half the population of London, the South East and the East support a mansion tax.
- A flat council tax rate of 0.6% of the value of a property (as an alternative to a mansion tax) is supported by 40% of people, with 27% unsure either way.
- 45% of people support increasing capital gains tax to 45%, with 23% unsure.
- 44% support the re-introduction of a 50% top rate of income tax, with 19% unsure.
- 52% think no inheritances should be taxed.
- People over 65 were much less likely (41%) to say no inheritances should be taxed.
Grants
Dr David Houghton received a grant (€183,455), part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie early career fund. The grant is aimed at supporting the development of a new researcher (in this case a PhD student from Madrid). Dr Houghton’s contribution will be to look at the physiological and psychological effects of various video/dynamic adverts, to determine what makes them successful.
Dr Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay's grants:
- PI, ESRC Impact Acceleration Grant, £9,983 starts from February 2015-Jan 30 2016, Co-I Louise Dixon, University of Birmingham.
- Co-investigator, Emergency Collaboration Services, £74,019.20, December, 2014-March 2015, PI Jon Parry, Skills for Justice, other Co-Is Eddie Kane, University of Nottingham, Denise Martin, University of West Scotland.
- Co-investigator, Norfolk and Suffolk constabulary grant on Research, Development and Training in Evidence Based Policing, from end 2014-2017, PI, Eddie Kane, University of Nottingham, other UOB Co-I’s Louise Dixon, Jessica Woodhams. Layla Branicki, Penelope Tuck and Antony Beech are named domain experts who will advise as needed. The consortium includes in addition to Nottingham and Birmingham, the Universities of Suffolk, Liverpool, Aston and Manchester and Skills for Justice, Crest Analytics and Get the Data.
Publications
- Find publications from previous news articles
Journal articles (alphabetical order)
LATEST:
S. Bandyopadhyay and B. McCannon, 2014, The Effect of the Election of Prosecutors on Criminal Trials, Public Choice, 161 (1-2), 141-156.
We examine whether elections of public prosecutors influence the mix of cases taken to trial versus plea bargained. A theoretical model is constructed wherein voters use outcomes of the criminal justice system as a signal of prosecutors' quality, leading to a distortion in the mix of cases taken to trial. Using data from North Carolina we test whether reelection pressures lead to (a) an increase in the number and proportion of convictions from jury trials and (b) a decrease in the average sanction obtained in both jury trials and pleas. Our empirical findings are consistent with our theoretical predictions.
Amaral, S., Bandyopadhyay, S., Bhattacharya, S and Sensarma, R (2014), ‘Crime across conflict and non-conflict states in India’, Economics of Peace and Security Journal, 9(1), 46-56
The paper has two main goals. First, using district level panel data we examine the key determinants of violent and property crimes in India for the period 1990-2007. Second, using the district level variation in Maoist conflict, we examine whether and how conflict affects various determinants of crime across different districts. In addition to looking at the conventional indicators of crime (law enforcement and economic variables), we examine how variation in sex ratios affects crime across districts. We also look at whether the gender of the chief political decision maker in each state (i.e. the Chief Minister) affects crime. We find that improvements in arrest rate decrease the incidence of violent and property crimes. Socio-economic variables have relatively little explanatory power. We also find suggestive evidence that unbalanced sex ratios, in particular in rural areas, may adversely affect crime. Female political representation with greater decision-making power diminishes both violent and non-violent crime. Finally, we find counter-intuitively that in districts affected by the Maoist insurgency, violent and non-violent crime decreases and offer explanations for why that may be the case.
Lepetit, L and Strobel. F. (2015) ‘Bank Insolvency Risk and Z-Score Measures: A Refinement’, Finance Research Letters, doi: 10.1016/j.frl.2015.01.001
We re-examine the probabilistic foundation of the link between Z-score measures and banks' probability of insolvency, offering an improved measure of that probability without imposing further distributional assumptions. While the traditional measure of the probability of insolvency thus provides a less effective upper bound of the probability of insolvency, it can be meaningfully reinterpreted as a measure capturing the odds of insolvency instead. We similarly obtain refined probabilistic interpretations of the commonly used simple and log-transformed Z-score measures; in particular, the log of the Z-score is shown to be negatively proportional to the log odds of insolvency.
Lepetit, L., Rugemintwari, C., and Strobel. F. (2014) ‘Monetary, financial and fiscal stability in the East African Community: ready for a monetary union?’ World Economy, doi: 10.1111/twec.12243
We examine prospects for a monetary union in the East African Community (EAC) by developing a stylized model of policymakers' decision problem that allows for uncertain benefits derived from monetary, financial and fiscal stability, and then calibrating the model for the EAC for the period 2003-2010. When policymakers properly allow for uncertainty, none of the countries wants to pursue a monetary union based on either monetary or financial stability grounds, and only Rwanda might favor it on fiscal stability grounds; we argue that robust institutional arrangements assuring substantial improvements in monetary, financial and fiscal stability are needed to compensate.
FORTHCOMING:
Gomes, E., Mellahi, K., Sahadev, S. and Harvey, A. (2015) ‘Perceptions of justice and organizational commitment in international mergers and acquisitions’, International Marketing Review. In Press.
This study examines the association between perceptions of justice and organizational commitment in cross-border M&As.
Our results show a strong association between employees perceptions of justice during the merger and commitment to the new organisation. Surprisingly, the results do not support the widely reported interaction effects between different organizational justices and employees’ commitment.
Bandyopadhyay, S and McCannon, B ‘Prosecutorial Retention: Signaling by Trial’ forthcoming, Journal of Public Economic Theory DOI: 10.1111/jpet.12107.
We examine how retention motives affect prosecutor behaviour under different evaluation criteria. In particular, we analyze how prosecutors of differing capabilities respond in choosing which cases to take to trial and which to plea bargain. We show how different criteria distort the mix of cases chosen for trial and that the direction of the distortion depends crucially on the evaluation tool used. Optimal evaluation metrics are derived that combine multiple signals of performance and are shown to achieve the first-best outcome.