High prevalence of clustered tuberculosis cases in peruvian migrants in Florence, Italy.

Tuberculosis is a leading cause of morbidity for Peruvian migrants in Florence, Italy, where they account for about 20% of yearly diagnosed cases. A retrospective study on cases notified in Peruvian residents in Florence in the period 2001-2010 was carried out and available Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains were genotyped (MIRU-VNTR-24 and Spoligotyping). One hundred thirty eight cases were retrieved. Genotyping performed in 87 strains revealed that 39 (44.8%) belonged to 12 clusters. Assuming that in each cluster the transmission of tuberculosis from the index case took place in Florence, a large proportion of cases could be preventable by improving early diagnosis of contagious cases and contact tracing

Zur Koordinierung der Unternehmensbesteuerung in Europa

Die Europäische Kommission hat kürzlich eine Reihe von Vorschlägen zur umfassenden Koordination der Unternehmensbesteuerung im europäischen Binnenmarkt vorgelegt. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert diese Vorschläge und kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass sie keine überzeugende Grundlage für die künftige Gestaltung der Unternehmensbesteuerung in Europa darstellen. Bei einer Umsetzung der Reformvorschläge wären teils erhebliche negative Nebenwirkungen zu erwarten, während signifikante Vorteile kaum erkennbar sind. Koordination in Form von Einzelmaßnahmen zur gezielten Beseitigung steuerlicher Hindernisse für grenzüberschreitende Investitionen in Europa verspricht mehr Erfolg. Abstract The European Commission recently submitted a set of proposals for a comprehensive coordination of corporate income taxation in the European internal market. The present paper analyses these proposals and concludes that they cannot be considered as a convincing basis for future corporate income taxation in Europe. The reason is that the reform proposals give rise to several undesirable side effects without offering significant advantages. Coordination in the form targeted measures aiming at the removal of obstacles for border crossing investment is likely to be more successful

Fiscal Federalism in Transition: Evidence from Ukraine

Effects of fiscal federalism on redistribution and economic growth are analyzed for Ukraine, a country with large regional differences. Since there is virtually no such empirical literature, except a study of the German case, and since there are several potential flaws, the results must be interpreted in a very tentative way. We find that this relatively poor, disorganized country with little democracy has effectively redistributed income from relatively wealthy to relatively poor regions and thus promoted regional economic convergence, and even dampened the recession in both types of regions. We also find that the evidence does not reject the view that relatively poor regions used the transfers in a growth-conducive fashion, and the paper argues that the findings may have implications beyond the case of Ukraine. But the analysis is tricky, uncertain, and merely a small step to an interesting research issue. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004fiscal equalization, fiscal federalism,