Revenue-productive income tax structures and tax reforms in emerging market economies - evidence from Bulgaria

Using a household budget survey for 1992, The author shows the poor revenue performance and distributional impact of Bulgaria's personal income tax system. He explores the implications for revenue and income distribution of two alternative tax systems - a flat tax and a progressive but simpler three-brackets tax system. He demonstrates that simpler tax structures with lower tax rates could achieve at least equal revenue and distributional objectives and are superior in terms of efficiency and equity. (The findings are robust when Bulgaria's significant tax evasion is included). But tax changes since 1992 have, if anything, moved Bulgaria even further from a simple income tax system: the number of rates and brackets increased from 7 to 10, and the levels of exemption remain unchanged. (Complex, higher rates complicate administration and enforcement and provide incentives for tax evasions. And in the alternative systems the author explores, the poor are protected with higher exemptions.) Fortunately, the country's personal income tax structure began to move toward less nominal progressivity after Bulgaria's 1997 tax reform program. The tax rate in thetop income bracket was reduced from 52 percent to 40 percent, the number of tax brackets was halved, and the exemption level was increased 20 percent (reducing tax burdens on the poor).Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Regional Governance,Tax Policy and Administration,Economic Theory&Research,Governance Indicators,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Tax Policy and Administration

Distribution of income and the income tax burden in Bulgaria

Using the 1992 Bulgarian household budget survey, the authors analyze the distribution of income and of the income tax burden by income and expenditure class and by rural-urban sector. They find: 1) Low income inequality (although that is changing rapidly). 2) A progressive income tax system. The poor (the lowest two-income decile) pay only 1.4 percent of their per capita income in income tax; the rich (the top decile) pay nearly 6 percent. In-kind income and expenditures are excluded from taxation. 3) The urban sector pays proportionately more in taxes than the rural sector. For example, urban households pay 5.3 percent of their per capita income in income tax, whereas the rural sector pays 2.4 percent. 3) Income tax contributes significantly to reducing income inequality at both the national and sectoral (rural-urban) level, as the poor pay a smaller share of taxes than their share of national income. These results hold whether income or expenditure is used as an indicator of economic well-being. The authors caution that as in-kind income becomes monetized and the economy becomes more market-oriented, the system will become less progressive and urban-rural differences will diminish. They contend that the bias toward higher urban taxes is justified to some extent by the fact that urban households benefit more from government services than rural households do.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Income,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Income,Inequality,Governance Indicators

Social safety net and the poor during the transition : the case of Bulgaria

Using data from the 1992 Bulgarian household budget survey, the authors analyze the structure of income in Bulgaria, identifying who the poor are and how they are reached by the social safety net. Their main findings about household incomes: (a) Social transfers provide an extremely large component - 24 percent - of household income per capita. That is roughly on a par with the share in other Eastern European countries but more than 40 percent higher than the share of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. (b) Wage earnings have declined as a source of income, reflecting the counteraction of the state sector. Wage income in Bulgaria has declined to only half the OECD level. (c) Income from self-employment has increased, reflecting the surge in small-scale retail establishments. Income is considerably less concentrated in Bulgaria than in other lower-middle-income countries. The author's main findings about the poor (the bottom 20 percent in terms of household income): The head of household in a poor home tends to be older, a woman, poorly educated, and unemployed. Poor households are not necessarily larger households in Bulgaria, unlike in other developing countries. The sources of income in poor Bulgarian households reflect other findings: (a) The poor depend for more than half their income on social benefits (especially pensions), indicating the importance of the social safety net. (b) The social safety net is not well targeted. Most social benefits are pro-poor, in the sense that they improve income distribution, but many benefits accrue to better-off households. There is substantial scope for better distribution of income. The authors conclude that comprehensive reform of social benefits is needed, focusing on pensions, unemployment benefits, child allowances, and social assistance.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Inequality,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Services&Transfers to Poor,Safety Nets and Transfers

Problem-based learning variant: Transition phase for a large institution

Objective: To compare students\u27 test scores and perceptions of problem-based learning (PBL) and lecture-based learning (LBL) by applying a PBL-variant.Method: For the transition from LBL to PBL, PBL was varied for one discipline only and for a large group of students. Two hundred forty nine second year medical students were taught a topic of Biochemistry by the LBL method and then 141 of these were taught another topic by the PBL-variant. At the conclusion of each topic an MCQ test was given. One week later a 9 item questionnaire was given to the 50 students now attending classes to assess their perceptions of the 2 teaching formats. The test scores of the two methods were compared. Students\u27 ratings were differentiated by the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test.Results: There was no significant difference in the test scores by PBL or LBL, but PBL received significantly higher student ratings (p \u3c 0.05) than LBL in self-study time, library time, number of books and computer consulted, enthusiasm for the topic, group discussion, depth of knowledge and interest taken in the teaching format. But there was no significant difference in students\u27 ratings of the teacher\u27s importance in either PBL or LBL.Conclusion: PBL variant and LBL produced similar MCQ test scores but the former is more conducive to enthusiastic self-study. Thus in the transition phase, PBL may be applied to one discipline and a large group of students without undermining its merits

M-ATTEMPT: A New Energy-Efficient Routing Protocol for Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a new routing protocol for heterogeneous Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASNs); Mobility-supporting Adaptive Threshold-based Thermal-aware Energy-efficientMulti-hop ProTocol (M-ATTEMPT). A prototype is defined for employing heterogeneous sensors on human body. Direct communication is used for real-time traffic (critical data) or on-demand data while Multi-hop communication is used for normal data delivery. One of the prime challenges in WBASNs is sensing of the heat generated by the implanted sensor nodes. The proposed routing algorithm is thermal-aware which senses the link Hot-spot and routes the data away from these links. Continuous mobility of human body causes disconnection between previous established links. So, mobility support and energy-management is introduced to overcome the problem. Linear Programming (LP) model for maximum information extraction and minimum energy consumption is presented in this study. MATLAB simulations of proposed routing algorithm are performed for lifetime and successful packet delivery in comparison with Multi-hop communication. The results show that the proposed routing algorithm has less energy consumption and more reliable as compared to Multi-hop communication.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1208.609

A lightweight and secure multilayer authentication scheme for wireless body area networks in healthcare system

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have lately been combined with different healthcare equipment to monitor patients' health status and communicate information with their healthcare practitioners. Since healthcare data often contain personal and sensitive information, it is important that healthcare systems have a secure way for users to log in and access resources and services. The lack of security and presence of anonymous communication in WBANs can cause their operational failure. There are other systems in this area, but they are vulnerable to offline identity guessing attacks, impersonation attacks in sensor nodes, and spoofing attacks in hub node. Therefore, this study provides a secure approach that overcomes these issues while maintaining comparable efficiency in wireless sensor nodes and mobile phones. To conduct the proof of security, the proposed scheme uses the Scyther tool for formal analysis and the Canetti–Krawczyk (CK) model for informal analysis. Furthermore, the suggested technique outperforms the existing symmetric and asymmetric encryption-based schemes

Identification of Rigid Body Parameters Using Experimental Modal Analysis Data

A simple direct method is presented here to identify the rigid body parameters of a structure under a free-free condition using the measured vibration data and geometrical co-ordinates of the measurement points relative to an arbitrarily selected general co-ordinate system. These parameters consist of mass, co-ordinates of mass centre, mass-moment of inertia, and the corresponding required principal values and axes. The test structure should be Weakly suspended or soft mounted to ground. The rigid body motion should be carefully selected from the measured transfer functions. Practical considerations like the selection of general co-ordinate system, the measurement and excitation points, the minimum set of measurements etc, to be noted during performing the vibration tests or evaluating the rigid body parameters are illustrated with the help of three practical examples. The accuracy of the identified parameters depends, to a great extent, on these considerations. Comparisons between identified and theoretical results are also given

Analyzing Energy-efficiency and Route-selection of Multi-level Hierarchal Routing Protocols in WSNs

The advent and development in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in recent years has seen the growth of extremely small and low-cost sensors that possess sensing, signal processing and wireless communication capabilities. These sensors can be expended at a much lower cost and are capable of detecting conditions such as temperature, sound, security or any other system. A good protocol design should be able to scale well both in energy heterogeneous and homogeneous environment, meet the demands of different application scenarios and guarantee reliability. On this basis, we have compared six different protocols of different scenarios which are presenting their own schemes of energy minimizing, clustering and route selection in order to have more effective communication. This research is motivated to have an insight that which of the under consideration protocols suit well in which application and can be a guide-line for the design of a more robust and efficient protocol. MATLAB simulations are performed to analyze and compare the performance of LEACH, multi-level hierarchal LEACH and multihop LEACH.Comment: NGWMN with 7th IEEE Inter- national Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2012), Victoria, Canada, 201

Comparison of oral versus vaginal misoprostol for induction of labour at term

Background: Preinduction cervical ripening has a great influence on induction of labor. For induction of labor various methods are used. Mechanical methods are Foleys catheter with or without extra-amniotic saline. Various pharmacological methods are misoprostol, dinoprostone, and oxytocin.Methods: This was a prospective observational study conducted on 100 patients with 50 patients in each group in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, Government Medical College, Srinagar from June 2020 to March 2021 over a period of 9 months. Induction with oral misoprostol or vaginal misoprostol was done in respective groups. Various parameters noted were induction delivery interval, number of doses needed, mode of delivery, and fetomaternal outcome.Results: Average number of doses of misoprostol in oral group was 3.84 and average number of doses in vaginal group was 1.90. Mean induction delivery interval in oral group was 16 hours and 10.94 hours in vaginal group. 32% patients delivered by full-term vaginal delivery (FTVD) in oral group and 18% underwent lower segment caesarean section (LSCS), while as 38% patients in vaginal group had FTVD and only 12% patients underwent LSCS.Conclusions: Our data supported the fact that induction with vaginal misoprostol can be equally effective in either oral or vaginal route. However, induction with vaginal misoprostol leads to shorter induction delivery interval compared to induction with oral misoprostol. Our study also highlighted the fact that induction with vaginal misoprostol requires lesser doses as compared to that with oral misoprostol. However, there are no significant differences in number of caesareans between the two groups. Difference in neonatal APGAR scores and maternal complications were non-significant in both the groups

Experimental Identification of Modal Density Parameters of Light Weight Structures

A basic requirement for the analysis of vibro-acoustic problems by means of the Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) is the knowledge of modal densities of the tested subsystems. For simple structures, modal densities are obtained by theoretical solutions. The application of the SEA to complex light weight structures often leads to sophisticated subsystems the modal densities of which cannot be received from theoretical solutions. Therefore, experimental procedures for the identification of modal densities are needed. This paper describes an experimental method based on the theoretical relation between the modal density and the real part of the point admittance, the conductance. Simulations of a simply supported rectangular plate show the accuracy and the limits of the method A steel plate and a thin-walled cylinder made offiber composite material have been thoroughly investigated by experiments. By this, the influence of the mass correction of the measured conductances is discussed in the paper. The experimental results are compared with theoretical results obtained from the code AutoSEA2. For medium and higher frequencies the results are in fairly good agreement