Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Evangelos KoumanakosUniversity of Ioannina , Department of Economics, Ioannina , Greece, Costas Siriopoulos,University of Patras, Department of Business Administration, Patra, Greece, ABSTRACTThe effects of corporate tax reforms in reported profits and firms' financial position have been extensively studied in the literature. However, only few studies disaggregate deferred tax items to jointly explore political implications and aspects of corporate behavior around such reforms. Greece's recent financial crisis and economic recession provides an intriguing setting for examining possible incentives and consequences of substantial tax rate changes, such as the 6% increase imposed by the Greek Government early in year 2013. Results reveal a totally different picture between financial and nonfinancial firms, with the former being clearly favored, at least from this short-run effect. More specifically, Greek banks, given the very significant Deferred Tax Assets Positions arising from the "haircut" of Greek Government Bonds known as PSI, strengthen their assets and net income by 1.58 billion Euros, corresponding to more than ¼ of their total losses at the end of 2012, whereas industrial firms experience a significant increase in long-term liabilities and a decrease in net income of 193%. These findings seem to coincide with the view that tax policy design is usually shaped by taking into consideration powerful groups' interests, as it normally happens with banks especially in periods of fiscal instability.

The impact of the Information and Technology (IT) sector on the countries’ innovation development has been recognized as crucial in prior and recent research studies. Moreover, firms’ innovativeness affects positively countries’ economies. Nevertheless, the global economic crisis of the last decade constituted a significant barrier to the development of country economies and had a negative effect on firms’ performance. Specifically, the negative consequences of the global crisis became harder for Southern Europe Countries. More specifically the Greek economy was suffered by an extended period of crisis with harder consequences than those of other European countries. The main purpose of this study was to examine the financial performance of Greek IT firms in the early years of crisis. Our findings have been relevant to those of previous studies which observed negative effects of the financial recession on firms profitability.