Billions Of Missing Links

Billions of Missing Links

A missing link in the analysis of global value chains: cross-border flows of intangible assets, taxation and related measurement implications

Understanding cross-border flows of disembodied knowledge, often associated with intellectual property (IP), is essential to analyzing how modern economies operate. This paper documents how available data to document these IP flows are distorted by various factors, including tax planning by multinational enterprises. It finds that tax-induced mismeasurement could be more than 35%, and greater for individual countries particularly high-tax-rate countries.

The Purpose of Everything

Wouldnt you just love to truly understand the purpose of your life, along with that of everyone and everything else in existence? This is not as difficult to realize as some believe. We only need to openly resolve a few fundamental questions from a big-picture perspective. Then understanding the purpose of everything will become more a matter of common sense than such a great mystery. These are the basic questions: Did we merely evolve, or were we created? If we were created, why were we created? If we were created by God, whose god, from which religion, is the genuine God? Can we know with absolute certainty that particular God is real? Why would any factual God allow bad things to happen to so many good people? And, can we know with certainty whether theres an afterlife? We all instinctively contemplate these questions, either consciously or subconsciously, so we must resolve them to understand who we are and our place in the grand scheme of things. Lets settle these issues once and for all.