The goal of the current study is to examine the relationship between corporate governance ratings and company value, for all the companies included in the S&P 100 Index, with the exception of companies involved in the financial sector, using data for 2013. The value of the company is quantified using the Tobin's Q ratio and the Enterprise Value, adjusted according to each activity sector. The corporate governance practices are reflected using the ISS Governance QuickScore 2.0 overall rating, provided by the Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS), as well as ratings for the board structure, compensation, shareholder rights, and audit. By estimating cross-section regression equations, we revealed the lack of a statistically significant relationship between the corporate governance ratings and company value. Therefore, when making investment decisions, these corporate governance ratings should be taken into consideration with certain reservations.

The convergence of taxation systems among the member states of the European Union has long been a major issue of debate. As the union continues to expand its borders, the convergence of the tax mix and of the fiscal pressure seemed to have been pushed aside in favor of other more pressing matters. However, with the recent signing of the Treaty for a Fiscal Stability Pact by 25 of the member states the question of fiscal convergence is once again in the limelight. In the current study, with the help of cluster analysis techniques, we will focus on finding and describing tax convergence tendencies in the European Union. We will not only show that taxation convergence tendencies exist among the member states, but we will also describe fiscal convergence groups and show their evolution from 1965 up until the present.

Fiscal pressure is often considered a barometer for the impact and level of taxation experienced by individual taxpayers and businesses. In Romania, the study of the tax burden has been and will remain a highly debated topic in a national as well as European context. Thus, in this article, we conducted a descriptive statistical analysis of the evolution of the tax burden in Romania, and showcased the research results in different graphically expressive ways (maps, tables, graphs), all presented from a dual perspective. On the one hand, we followed the impact of taxation on households, and on the other hand, in a broader approach, we highlighted the tax burden reflected at the county and regional level

Taxation is a major factor in political, economic, social and fiscal policy decisions. The current study looks at the eurozone Member States in order to establish if fiscal convergence towards the Maastricht criteria leads to tax convergence. The research method is sigma-convergence based on three different variation measures (the coefficient of variation, the Gini coefficient and the Theil index). The overall tax burden is used to define national tax systems. The research period is 1995-2013.