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[阅读小分队] 【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障19系列】【19-15】经管

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发表于 2013-5-29 23:03:05 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
大家好,周三经管来了~
最近丢钱包的事情频繁发生,提醒大家注意看管好自己贵重物品啊。另外,心动找了篇犯罪经济学论文,把Executive Summary节选出来放在越障里,不知道大家接受度如何,求反馈~

P.S.特别感谢猴哥的发帖技术支持啊,猴哥大好人~
你!们!懂!的!:


Part I: Speed

Article 1 (Check the title later)
Who Cares About Facebook? Alibaba is Now Bigger

[Time 1]
   Earlier this morning, Yahoo (YHOO) released its latest 10Q filing.
   In it, there were several positive details disclosed. However, the biggest one that jumped out was how its investment in China’s Alibaba Group was doing.
   Recall that Yahoo! owns 24% of Alibaba and will sell half that stake when Alibaba IPOs —which could be as soon as next week. Yahoo’s stake will be sold at the IPO price.
   Yesterday, there was a Bloomberg article discussing that Alibaba management wants to avoid a “FacebookFlop”when they IPO. Therefore, according to that article, Alibaba management wants to avoid going public at $100 billion valuation and would rather go public at a more tempered amount. Bloomberg suggests something like $62.5 billion would be more reasonable.
Yet, according to the details embedded within today’s Yahoo! 10Q, Alibaba Group is now larger than Facebook.
   Here are the facts.
   In Q4, Facebook reported $1.54 billion in revenue and $64 million in net income.
   In Q4 (reported today, as Alibaba’s financials are reported on a 1 quarter lag in Yahoo’s filings), Alibaba did $1.84 billion in revenue and $650 million in net income.
   It would be odd, then, if Alibaba priced itself at $62.5 billion, given that Facebook’s market cap is currently $66 billion. Which do you think has a more sustainable long-term business model: Facebook selling ads or Alibaba transacting with 1.3 billion Chinese?
If you only look at the revenue difference between the two companies, you would conclude that Alibaba should be valued at $80 billion.
   That suggests that Yahoo!’s 24% stake is worth $19.2 billion pre-tax or $13 billion net. Yahoo’s current market cap is $29 billion, which includes about $6.5 billion of net cash and pref shares in Alibaba, and a $6.5 billion (net) stake in Yahoo Japan. This suggests Yahoo’s “core”business is only worth about $3 billion according to the wisdom of the market (or 2x its EBITDA, when AOL is trading at 6x).
   It will be fun to track just how big Facebook and Alibaba grow in the next 5 years.
(339 words)

Source: YOUDAO
http://xue.youdao.com/biarticle.a?articleId=-1718422217664701415&date=2013-05-29&position=read&channelType=personal



Article 2
Campaigners are Calling for the World's Richest Countries to End Tax Havens

[Time 2]
   Demonstrators recently protested outside the British Treasury to call on the world's richest countries to end so called tax havens. These tax haven policies allow companies to move their profits to countries with lower taxes. An investigation found that this practice costs Africa alone $38 billion a year in lost taxes. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan led the investigation.
   The demonstrators at the Treasury called on Chancellor George Osborne to discuss the practice with finance ministers from other wealthy countries. Melanie Ward is spokesperson for the 'Enough For Everyone If' campaign.
   "I think a lot of people here in the U.K. and around the world are fed up with tax dodging. They are fed up with a system where the rich and powerful play by a different set of rules to everybody else."
   Ronen Palan is a professor at City University London. Professor Palan says tax havens and no-tax countries like Ireland are popular, because companies and wealthy individuals can save money.
   "These countries offer very low taxation, either to corporations or to individuals. And specifically they target non-residents."
   But critics of tax havens say big companies transfer profits out of the very countries on which they and their wealth depend.
   "Africa exported about $1 trillion of capital in the last 30 years whereas inward investment in terms of FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] or aid is about $300 billion.  So Africa is losing capital.  Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa, is actually funding development elsewhere."
(244 words)
[Time 3]
   But charity ActionAid says the brewing company SABMiller uses a complex system of tax havens. It says this system moves profits out of the company's operations in developing countries like Ghana. SABMiller denies any tax abuses. It says in 2010 it paid about $250 million in corporate taxes in India and sub-Saharan Africa. ActionAid also accuses an Associated British Foods of using its subsidiary companies to reduce its taxes in Zambia by millions of dollars. Associated British Foods says the accusations are "incomplete at best and factually wrong in places."
   Mark Littlewood is Director General of the Institute for Economic Affairs in London. He argues that tax havens help the global economy by increasing investment.
   "This idea that, sort of, Western companies that are tax efficient are exploiting these places rather than bringing inward investment to them, I think, is a rather neo-imperialist old style way of looking at the world.  We want more of that inward investment.  That creates jobs and creates growth in some of the poorest countries in the world."
   Leaders of the G8 countries meet in Britain next month. British Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to include the issue of tax havens in their summit meeting.
(201 words)

Source: VOA
http://www.51voa.com/VOA_Special_English/Campaigners-are-calling-for-the-world-s-richest-countries-to-end-tax-havens-49923.html



Article 3
Fighting China’s hackers
Is it time to retaliate against cyber-thieves?
[Time 4]
   IT SOUNDS like an airport thriller: a near-future in which American firms wage private cyber-combat against Chinese rivals. But precisely that scenario is being considered by former senior American officials, who report that intellectual property (IP) is being stolen on an unprecedented scale, and that passive defences no longer work.
   Annual losses from the theft of American IP are probably on a similar scale to America’s total exports to Asia, at around $300 billion a year, concludes a report by a Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a private initiative led by Dennis Blair, Barack Obama’s first director of national intelligence, and Jon Huntsman, a former ambassador to China and unsuccessful contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. “Extraordinary” numbers of commercial and government entities are bent on stealing American IP. Between half and 80% of them are Chinese, depending on the sector, commissioners say. They also point accusing fingers at India, Russia and Venezuela.
   To date victims have been loth to retaliate. Companies do not want to be seen as “weak” and fear being singled out for punishment as they seek access to Chinese markets, says Mr Huntsman. Companies under attack also face legal constraints that defy common sense, says Admiral Blair. Victims face prosecution if they accidentally damage hackers’ American-hosted computers when trying to recover stolen files, let alone if they deliberately tell files to self-destruct.
   Changing the law to permit aggressive counter-measures would be controversial, though some in Congress would doubtless be keen. Before that, commissioners will push to speed up and expand the process by which trade officials watch for counterfeit goods entering America, so that goods thought to contain stolen IP can be swiftly impounded. Other recommendations include denying repeat offenders access to America’s banking system, or blocking IP abusers from making big American investments.
   Risky stuff. But firms are losing patience, says Mr Huntsman. Lots for Mr Obama to discuss with China’s president Xi Jinping when they meet in June.
(328 words)

Source: The Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578405-it-time-retaliate-against-cyber-thieves-fighting-chinas-hackers





Article 4
Who will tame the taxman?
The IRS has behaved badly, but the real villain is Congress
[Time 5]
   WHEN Barack Obama fired the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) earlier this month, he doubtless hoped to quell the hullabaloo about its seemingly partial treatment of applications for tax-exempt status from conservative groups. He failed. This week protests were held outside several IRS offices, and Congress continued to investigate. The bureaucrat at the heart of the row refused to answer questions to avoid self-incrimination. Republicans began to invoke the word “impeachment”, if only to say, with a show of moderation, that it was not quite justified on the evidence revealed so far.
   It turns out that more people in the White House were aware of the IRS’s misdeeds earlier than the administration had previously admitted. Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, had originally made it sound as if the occupants of the building knew nothing more than that the inspector-general who oversees the IRS was about to produce a report on some internal abuses. Now Mr Carney admits that Mr Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, not only knew about the nature of the scandal, but had discussed with Treasury staff when the report on it would be released.
   The IRS selected for extra scrutiny groups whose names included conservative buzzwords, such as “tea party”, “9/12” and “patriot”. Republicans accuse the taxmen of persecuting anti-tax groups. The IRS’s defenders insist that a few low-level functionaries simply made a clumsy attempt at an administrative short-cut. A Pew poll finds that 42% of Americans believe the IRS acted on orders from the administration. No one has uncovered evidence of that.
   Evidence abounds, however, that the IRS was badly run. The inspector-general’s report found “confusion” in the unit that picked on conservative groups about the section of the tax code they were supposed to be enforcing, known as 501(c)(4). Even when this became obvious to senior managers, the problem took almost a year to fix. And while it festered, some applications for the tax status in question lingered unresolved for over two years, while the hapless applicants were bombarded with unreasonable and intrusive requests for information, on everything from the content of their Facebook pages to the books their members read.
(361 words)
[The rest]
   By its own admission, the service the IRS provides to taxpayers has been getting worse. Last year, it failed to reply to correspondence within the time specified by its own rules almost half the time. Between 2004 and 2012 the proportion of calls on its toll-free line it managed to answer fell from 87% to 68%, and the average wait rose from 3 minutes to 17. This year it is doing even worse. On April 15th, the day tax returns are due, it only answered 57% of calls. That matters, since “voluntary compliance”, as opposed to chasing delinquent taxpayers, brings in more money at less cost. The IRS is also doing less chasing (although few will lament that): the odds of an individual receiving a full audit are now just 1 in 360.
   Money is part of the problem: since 2010, the IRS’s budget has been cut by 8%, as has its staff. To help make the required savings, the IRS is shutting up shop on five days over the summer. By the end of the year it will also have cut its training budget by over 80%. As the Taxpayer Advocate, an ombudsman, points out, cutting the IRS’s budget to reduce the deficit is misguided, since the more the agency spends, the more money it brings in.
   In spite of the shortage of manpower and cash, much of the IRS’s time is devoted to inconsequential tasks. In the case of the applications for 501(c)(4) status, it seems to have dwelt on the submissions of small, local outfits, while waving through those from much bigger national groups. A recent drive to root out fraud in claims for tax credits related to adopting children is barely worth the effort, complains the Taxpayer Advocate. The IRS audited 69% of claims for this credit, yet of the $668m taxpayers said they were entitled to in 2011, it disallowed only $11m, or 1.5%. Adoptive parents, it turns out, are not the sinister conspiracy against the public purse that everyone imagined.
   Lawmakers write the loopholes  


   The main reason why Americans dislike dealing with the IRS is not, however, the bureaucrats’ fault. Congress keeps making the tax code more complex. It is now 4m words long, and has been changed over 4,000 times since 2001 (see table). Americans spend 6.1 billion hours a year complying with it—enough work to keep over 3m people employed full-time without producing anything. Nearly 90% of filers pay for help with their returns. The cost of all this is equivalent to 15% of the tax raised, the taxpayer advocate reckons. This too, is self-defeating, in that it discourages compliance.
   Politicians from both parties have long talked about simplifying the code by eliminating credits and deductions and using the proceeds to lower rates dramatically. Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate have been working diligently on just such a plan. The Republican-controlled House would like to reduce corporate and personal income-tax rates to 25%. Democrats would rather use some of the revenue raised to pay down the deficit.
   Some congressmen speak of a “grand bargain”, in which Republicans concede revenue increases in exchange for cuts to government health care and pensions, but there is little sign that the leaders of either party are prodding lawmakers towards such a deal. Politicians usually balk at taking on the myriad vested interests which all ferociously defend their favourite tax breaks, says Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. For that reason, he argues, “tax reform is always the bridesmaid and never the bride”.
(592 words)

Source: The Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578387-irs-has-behaved-badly-real-villain-congress-who-will-tame-taxman


Part II: Obstacle

Article 5
Executive Summary

   Within the context of the United Nations Global Pulse initiative on monitoring the impact of crisis on vulnerable populations, this report presents the results of a unique cross-national analysis that aims to investigate the possible effects of economic stress on crime. Using police-recorded crime data for the crimes of intentional homicide, robbery and motor vehicle theft, from fifteen country or city contexts across the world, the analysis examines in particular the period of global financial crisis in 2008/2009. As economic crisis may occur over a relatively short timescale, this period, as well as – in many cases – up to 20 years previously, are examined using high frequency (monthly) crime and economic data.
   The report finds that, whether in times of economic crisis or non-crisis, economic factors play an important role in the evolution of crime trends. Out of a total of fifteen countries examined, statistical modelling identifies an economic predictor for at least one crime type in twelve countries (80 percent), suggesting some overall association between economic changes and crime.
   In eleven of the fifteen countries examined, economic indicators showed significant changes suggestive of a period of economic crisis in 2008/2009.            Both visual inspection of data series and statistical modelling suggest that in eight of these eleven ‘crisis’ countries, changes in economic factors were  associated with changes in crime, leading to identifiable crime ‘peaks’ during the time of crisis. Violent property crime types such as robbery appeared most affected during times of crisis, with up to two-fold increases in some contexts during a period of economic stress. However, in some contexts, increases in homicide and motor vehicle theft were also observed. These findings are consistent with criminal motivation theory, which suggests that economic stress may increase the incentive for individuals to engage in illicit behaviours. In no case where it was difficult to discern a peak in crime was any decrease in crime observed. As such, the available data do not support a criminal opportunity theory that decreased levels of production and consumption may reduce some crime types, such as property crime, through the generation of fewer potential crime targets.
   For each country/city a number of individual crimes and economic variables were analyzed. Across all combinations, a significant association between an economic factor and a crime type was identified in around 47 percent of individual combinations. For each country, different combinations of crime and economic predictors proved to be significant. Among the two methods used to analyze the links between economic and crime factors (visualization and statistical modelling), different combinations of factors were found to be significant and in five cases the two methods identified the same variables. Three out of these five cases represented city contexts rather than national contexts. This may indicate that associations between crime and economic factors are best examined at the level of the smallest possible geographic unit.
   The statistical model proved successful at forecasting possible changes in crime for a number of crime typecountry/city contexts. Forecasting for a period of three months using a statistical model with economic predictors proved possible with reasonable accuracy (both in terms of direction and magnitude) in a number of different contexts, including both in times of crisis and non-crisis. Many of the forecasts are sufficiently accurate to be of value in a practical scenario. Crime forecasts sometimes led, however, to underestimation of crime changes, suggesting that modelling of crime changes is not optimal when based on economic predictors alone. Indeed, economic changes are not the only factor that may impact levels of crime. The presence of youth gangs, weapons availability, the availability and level of protection of potential targets, drug and alcohol consumption and the effectiveness of law enforcement activity all play a significant role in enabling or restraining overall crime levels.
   Although the challenges remain significant, this report demonstrates that – with comparatively few resources – a lot may be learned from the application of analytical techniques to existing data. Continued methodological development, including the creation of an online data reporting ‘portal’, as well as the strengthening of exchange of information and experience, between countries, has the potential to lay the foundation of a strong ‘early-warning’ system. The analysis reported here does not prove the existence of relationships between economic factors and crime. It does provide strong indications that certain associations are present, and that much may be gained from further investigation. If the impact of economic stress on crime trends can be further understood, and even forecasted in the short-term, then there is the potential to gain much through policy development and crime prevention action.
(756 words)

Source: UNODC (Paper: MONITORING THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC CRISIS ON CRIME)
http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/GIVAS_Final_Report.pdf


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发表于 2013-5-29 23:04:22 | 显示全部楼层
带着卷福坐沙发~~

——————————————————————————————————

Speed
01:42
Alibaba now is bigger than facebook.
01:35
Critics on tax havens
01:00
Support on tax havens
02:06
"Extraordinary" numbers of commercial and government entities are bent on stealing American IP, between half and 80% of them are Chinese.
Obama will discuss with Xi Jinping when they meet in June.
01:55
The scandal of IRS

Obstacle
03:12
Main idea: Economy and crime
Attitude:   Objective
Structure:
             1) What the report presents
                 ----- Changes in economic factors are associated with changes in crime.
             2) Facts that support the viewpoint of the report
                 ----- Research of other countries' data
             3) The statistical model helps forecast changes in crime.
                 ----- It has both advantages and disadvantages.
             4) What the report demonstrates.
                 ----- Certain associations are present, and that much may be gained from further investigation.

发表于 2013-5-29 23:05:21 | 显示全部楼层
占!

心动辛苦了,早安休息!

Time1 1'31"
Time2 1'12"
Time3 49"
Time4 1'35"
Time5 1'47"+ 1'37"
Obstacle 4'15"
发表于 2013-5-29 23:07:47 | 显示全部楼层
闻作业粗!!首页!!


1 - 01:53
Alibaba's IPO will have greater potential than FB did. And the author suggests that one of Alibaba's stakeholder, Yahoo, will have great benifit from A's IPO.

2 - 01:20
3 - 01:12
Some people require some rich countries to end tax havens. They say that such policies are unfair especially for such poor countries as in Africa.

4 A 01:54
5 A 02:34
对米国的税啊什么的不了解,看起来略吃力TT
发表于 2013-5-29 23:26:10 | 显示全部楼层
先占!明天再来!首页!

time1 00:01:41.43
alibaba's stake will change recently. compared alibaba and facebook
time2 00:01:38.03
tax-free countries are favored by companies,but some one argued that tax haven is contributing little profits.
time3 00:01:12.98
many companies are moving profits out of tax haven and these countries have no advantages actually.
time4 00:01:57.31
air industry conflict bewteen american and china
time5 00:02:06.17
irs in us is badly running but obama's action about irs has failed. the congress and some people still in favour of it. but some prooves have been put out to signify this fact.
发表于 2013-5-29 23:33:49 | 显示全部楼层
终于有首页了~~心动姐辛苦了
2.26
2.12
1.40
2.58
3.57

6.40
发表于 2013-5-30 01:02:54 | 显示全部楼层
没道理不占个首页的~!响应号召,挂猴头读小分队咯
------------------------------------------------------------
1'22''
1'13''
58''
2'04''
2'15''
3'29''

5'04''
发表于 2013-5-30 06:46:04 | 显示全部楼层
首页,得赶快
1'40"
1'20"
1'10"
2'15"
2'05"
4'30"
发表于 2013-5-30 06:47:01 | 显示全部楼层
谢谢分享~~越障很棒~~

0:01:46
0:01:31
0:01:05
0:02:02
0:02:20
0:01:43+0:01:25

0:04:13
发表于 2013-5-30 07:06:19 | 显示全部楼层
1-47
Yahoo sold its half of Alibaba's stake and Alibaba is never dependent on Yahoo anymore
2-02
how the tex heaven works and how it harms other countries
1-12
the good side of tax heaven, helping increase global investment
2-24
American websites were hacked by Chinese and the government propose some strategies to defend
2-23
Obama fire the acting head of the IRS this month
4-06
a report shows the connection between crime committment and economic situation
>>>in any time economic factors is important in crime trend
>>>some history or provement of how the economic factors affect the crime in society
>>>some successful ways of forecasting crimes
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