Enhanced Cooperation in an Asymmetric Model of Tax Competition

This paper analyzes enhanced cooperation agreements in corporate taxation in a three country tax competition model where countries differ in size. We characterize equilibrium tax rates and the optimal tax responses due to the formation of an enhanced cooperation agreement. Conditions for strategic complementarity or strategic substitutability of tax rates are crucial for the welfare effects of enhanced cooperation. Simulations show that enhanced cooperation is unlikely to be feasible for small countries. When enhanced cooperation is feasible, it may hamper global harmonization. Only when countries are of similar size is global harmonization a feasible outcome

Long-term performance of a plant microbial fuel cell with Spartina anglica

The plant microbial fuel cell is a sustainable and renewable way of electricity production. The plant is integrated in the anode of the microbial fuel cell which consists of a bed of graphite granules. In the anode, organic compounds deposited by plant roots are oxidized by electrochemically active bacteria. In this research, salt marsh species Spartina anglica generated current for up to 119 days in a plant microbial fuel cell. Maximum power production was 100 mW m−2 geometric anode area, highest reported power output for a plant microbial fuel cell. Cathode overpotential was the main potential loss in the period of oxygen reduction due to slow oxygen reduction kinetics at the cathode. Ferricyanide reduction improved the kinetics at the cathode and increased current generation with a maximum of 254%. In the period of ferricyanide reduction, the main potential loss was transport loss. This research shows potential application of microbial fuel cell technology in salt marshes for bio-energy production with the plant microbial fuel cell

Reliability of the automatic procedures for locating earthquakes in southwestern Alps and northern Apennines (Italy)

International audienceReliable automatic procedure for locating earthquake in quasi-real time is strongly needed for seismic warning system, earthquake preparedness, and producing shaking maps. The reliability of an automatic location algorithm is influenced by several factors such as errors in picking seismic phases, network geometry, and velocity model uncertainties. The main purpose of this work is to investigate the performances of different automatic procedures to choose the most suitable one to be applied for the quasi-real-time earthquake locations in northwestern Italy. The reliability of two automatic-picking algorithms (one based on the Characteristic Function (CF) analysis, CF picker, and the other one based on the Akaike's information criterion (AIC), AIC picker) and two location methods (“Hypoellipse” and “NonLinLoc” codes) is analysed by comparing the automatically determined hypocentral coordinates with reference ones. Reference locations are computed by the “Hypoellipse” code considering manually revised data and tested using quarry blasts. The comparison is made on a dataset composed by 575 seismic events for the period 2000–2007 as recorded by the Regional Seismic network of Northwestern Italy. For P phases, similar results, in terms of both amount of detected picks and magnitude of travel time differences with respect to manual picks, are obtained applying the AIC and the CF picker; on the contrary, for S phases, the AIC picker seems to provide a significant greater number of readings than the CF picker. Furthermore, the “NonLinLoc” software (applied to a 3D velocity model) is proved to be more reliable than the “Hypoellipse” code (applied to layered 1D velocity models), leading to more reliable automatic locations also when outliers (wrong picks) are present

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Estimating the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for Italian Manufacturing Sectors

The purpose of this paper is to test the general validity of the NKPC previsions for the Italian manufacturing industries. In particular we are interested in estimating the extent to which the degree of nominal inertia and the fraction of backward-looking price-setters differ from industry to industry. We attempt to address this issue by testing three different model specifications: a pure forward-looking model versus a hybrid model where an income labour share marginal cost measure is considered, and a modified hybrid model specification where marginal costs are corrected to include intermediate inputs. Our results show that the backward-looking component is statistically significant and quantitatively large for all industries. Moreover, this estimate does not depend on the models specification. Conversely, the parameter measuring the extent of price rigidity is sensitive to the definition of firms cost. Interpreting the overall results, we conclude that price-setting behaviour is not totally homogeneous among Italian firms

Lactate disposal via gluconeogenesis is increased during exercise in patients with mitochondrial myopathy due to complex I deficiency

This study evaluated lactate disposal via gluconeogenesis as well as effects of FFA availability on gluconeogenesis via pyruvate (GNG(PYR)) in patients with mitochondrial myopathy due to complex I deficiency (CID). The rates of GNG(PYR) were measured in three CID patients and six healthy controls at rest and during 90 min cycle exercise, using the deuterium-labeled water method. All subjects served as their own control: on one occasion they were studied in the fasting state, and on the second occasion they received an infusion of triacylglycerol plus heparin, At rest. the fractional rate of gluconeogenesis from pyruvate was higher in patients than in controls in the fasting state. Triacylglycerol infusion was associated with increased rates of GNG(PYR) at rest in controls (p <0.05) but not in patients. Circulating lactate and pyruvate levels were increased 3-fold during exercise in the CID patients. During exercise, GNG(PYR) increased in the CID patients (p <0.01) and remained unchanged in controls, resulting in 85% and 72% higher absolute rates of GNG(PYR) in the patients than in the controls during fasting and triacylglycerol infusion. respeclively. During exercise. rates of GNG(PYR) were not different between fasting and triacylglycerol infusion within both groups. Our data shock that 1) GNG(PYR) is increased during exercise in CID patients 2) increased pyruvate availability contributes to the higher rates of GNG(PYR) in the CID patients: and 3) exogenous infusion of fatty acids is not associated with increased rates of GNG(PYR) in CID patients at rest or during exercise. GNG(PYR) is a significant mechanism of lactate disposal in exercising CID patients. but triglyceride infusion does not enhance their lactate disposal through this mechanism