Tax treatment of employer commuting support: an international review

Correctly pricing transport behaviour to take account of the ‘external’ costs such as congestion and emissions imposed on society by excessive car use has long been a tenet of effective transportation demand management. But while policy‐makers have striven to increase public transport subsidies, raise petrol taxes and introduce road‐user charging schemes to price the real costs of car travel properly, in most cases correcting the wider influences of the personal tax regime has begun only relatively recently. This paper is based on work undertaken for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Inland Revenue of the UK government, which is currently working on addressing this very issue. In addition to reporting the British situation, the paper also uses a series of case studies to outline how this same process has been approached in the USA, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway, and how successful they have been thus far with respect to transportation demand management objectives. It then draws conclusions about which direction policy‐makers should be aiming for in the future

The impacts of corruption on firm performance: some lessons from 40 African countries

The current evidence-base regarding the impacts of corruption on firm performance is based largely on studies of individual countries and contains mixed results. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to achieve a better insight into this relationship by reporting the results of a firm-level analysis of the impacts of corruption on firm performance using World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data across 40 African countries. The clear result is that corruption significantly enhances rather than harms annual sales, employment and productivity growth rates. The outcome is to re-theorize participation in acts of corruption as beneficial for the individual firms engaged in such activity, while recognizing the wider evidence that this is not an optimal strategy at the aggregate country level. The outcome will be to advance knowledge about how corruption needs to be tackled. To eliminate corruption, it is shown here to be necessary for public authorities to recognize that corruption is an efficient strategy at the firm level and to adopt measures to alter the cost/benefit ratio confronting individual enterprises, and at the same time, to address the country-level formal institutional deficiencies that characterize many developing countries and result in the prevalence of corruption

Business Registration and Firm Performance: Some Lessons From India

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impacts on future firm performance of a firm deciding to register from the outset of its operations. Until now, the assumption has been that starting up registered is linked to higher future firm performance. Reporting World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data collected in 2014 on 9,281 formal enterprises in India, and controlling for other determinants of firm performance as well as the endogeneity of the registration decision, the finding is that formal enterprises that start up unregistered and spend longer unregistered have significantly higher subsequent annual sales and employment growth rates compared with those registered from the outset. When the number of years spent unregistered is included, there are also productivity gains from delaying registration. The tentative explanation is that in this weak institutional environment, the advantages of registering from the outset are outweighed by the benefits of deferring registration. Evaluating the policy implications, the argument is that there is a need to shift away from the conventional eradication approach toward unregistered startups based on the assumption they are unproductive, and toward a more facilitating approach that improves the benefits of being registered and tackles the systemic formal institutional deficiencies that lead entrepreneurs to delay their decision to register

Infant Feeding Information, Attitudes and Practices: a Longitudinal Survey in Central Nepal

Background: Infant feeding is governed by environmental as well as cultural factors. Breastfeeding knowledge and attitudes are known to be associated with breastfeeding duration. This study investigated breastfeeding information, attitudes and supplementary feeding in the central hills district of Nepal.Methods: A community-based prospective cohort study of 701 pregnant women was conducted. Information on breastfeeding attitudes, feeding practices and supplementary feeding was sought from the cohort at 4 weeks, 12 weeks and 22 weeks postpartum through repeated interviews using validated questionnaires.Results: Average duration of intended breastfeeding was 28 months (SD 7.9) and average target time to introduce solid foods was 6.1 months (SD 1.2). About 80% of women reported their husband, mother/mother-in-law preferred breastfeeding. Eleven percent of the cohort said that breastfeeding was not enjoyable. At 12 weeks and 22 weeks after birth, about a quarter (24.8%) and half (52.8%) of the infants were introduced cow/buffalo milk, respectively, while only 6.3% and 13.4% of them were given infant formula. Overall, any breastfeeding rate remained high at over 98% throughout the follow up period.Conclusions: Breastfeeding attitudes were encouraging in this population. Breastfeeding was almost universal. Use of infant formula was quite low, whereas cow or buffalo milk appeared to be popular supplementary foods

Influence of Exposure History on the Immunology and Development of Resistance to Human Schistosomiasis Mansoni

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic blood fluke infection of 200 million people worldwide. We have shown that humans can acquire immunity to reinfection after repeated exposures and cures with the drug praziquantel. The increase in resistance to reinfection was associated with an increase in schistosome-specific IgE. The ability to develop resistance and the rate at which resistance was acquired varied greatly in two cohorts of men within close geographic proximity and with similar occupational exposures to schistosomes. These differences are likely attributable to differences in history of exposure to Schistosoma mansoni infection and immunologic status at baseline, with those acquiring immunity faster having lifelong S. mansoni exposure and immunologic evidence of chronic S. mansoni infection. As many conflicting results have been reported in the literature regarding immunologic parameters associated with the development of resistance to schistosome infection, exposure history and prior immune status should be considered in the design of future immuno-epidemiologic studies

Status of Muon Collider Research and Development and Future Plans

The status of the research on muon colliders is discussed and plans are outlined for future theoretical and experimental studies. Besides continued work on the parameters of a 3-4 and 0.5 TeV center-of-mass (CoM) energy collider, many studies are now concentrating on a machine near 0.1 TeV (CoM) that could be a factory for the s-channel production of Higgs particles. We discuss the research on the various components in such muon colliders, starting from the proton accelerator needed to generate pions from a heavy-Z target and proceeding through the phase rotation and decay ($\pi \to \mu \nu_{\mu}$) channel, muon cooling, acceleration, storage in a collider ring and the collider detector. We also present theoretical and experimental R & D plans for the next several years that should lead to a better understanding of the design and feasibility issues for all of the components. This report is an update of the progress on the R & D since the Feasibility Study of Muon Colliders presented at the Snowmass'96 Workshop [R. B. Palmer, A. Sessler and A. Tollestrup, Proceedings of the 1996 DPF/DPB Summer Study on High-Energy Physics (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA, 1997)].Comment: 95 pages, 75 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Special Topics, Accelerators and Beam

Informal entrepreneurship in developing economies: the impacts of starting-up unregistered on firm performance

To advance understanding of the entrepreneurship process in developing economies, this paper evaluates whether registered enterprises that initially avoid the cost of registration, and focus their resources on overcoming other liabilities of newness, lay a stronger foundation for subsequent growth. Analyzing World Bank Enterprise Survey data across 127 countries, and controlling for other firm performance determinants, registered enterprises that started-up unregistered and spent longer operating unregistered are revealed to have significantly higher subsequent annual sales, employment and productivity growth rates compared with those that registered from the outset. The theoretical and policy implications are then discussed

Confidence and competence with mathematical procedures

Confidence assessment (CA), in which students state alongside each of their answers a confidence level expressing how certain they are, has been employed successfully within higher education. However, it has not been widely explored with school pupils. This study examined how school mathematics pupils (N = 345) in five different secondary schools in England responded to the use of a CA instrument designed to incentivise the eliciting of truthful confidence ratings in the topic of directed (positive and negative) numbers. Pupils readily understood the negative marking aspect of the CA process and their facility correlated with their mean confidence with r = .546, N = 336, p < .001, indicating that pupils were generally well calibrated. Pupils’ comments indicated that the vast majority were positive about the CA approach, despite its dramatic differences from more usual assessment practices in UK schools. Some pupils felt that CA promoted deeper thinking, increased their confidence and had a potential role to play in classroom formative assessment

A community-based physical activity intervention to prevent mobility-related disability for retired older people (REtirement in ACTion (REACT)): Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: The REtirement in ACTion (REACT) study is a multi-centre, pragmatic, two-arm, parallel-group randomised controlled trial (RCT) with an internal pilot phase. It aims to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a community, group-based physical activity intervention for reducing, or reversing, the progression of functional limitations in older people who are at high risk of mobility-related disability. Methods/design: A sample of 768 sedentary, community-dwelling, older people aged 65 years and over with functional limitations, but who are still ambulatory (scores between 4 and 9 out of 12 in the Short Physical Performance Battery test (SPPB)) will be randomised to receive either the REACT intervention, delivered over a period of 12 months by trained facilitators, or a minimal control intervention. The REACT study incorporates comprehensive process and economic evaluation and a nested sub-study which will test the hypothesis that the REACT intervention will slow the rate of brain atrophy and of decline in cognitive function assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Outcome data will be collected at baseline, 6, 12 and 24 months for the main study, with MRI sub-study data collected at baseline, 6 and 12 months. The primary outcome analysis (SPPB score at 24 months) will be undertaken blinded to group allocation. Primary comparative analyses will be on an intention-to-treat (ITT) basis with due emphasis placed on confidence intervals. Discussion: REACT represents the first large-scale, pragmatic, community-based trial in the UK to target the non-disabled but high-risk segment of the older population with an intervention to reduce mobility-related disability. A programme that can successfully engage this population in sufficient activity to improve strength, aerobic capacity, coordination and balance would have a major impact on sustaining health and independence. REACT is also the first study of its kind to conduct a full economic and comprehensive process evaluation alongside the RCT. If effective and cost-effective, the REACT intervention has strong potential to be implemented widely in the UK and elsewhere

Impact of sex on response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with bladder cancer

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.Objective: To assess the effect of patient's sex on response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in patients with clinically nonmetastatic muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). Methods: Complete pathologic response, defined as ypT0N0 at radical cystectomy, and downstaging were evaluated using sex-adjusted univariable and multivariable logistic regression modeling. We used interaction terms to account for age of menopause and smoking status. The association of sex with overall survival and cancer-specific survival was evaluated using Cox regression analyses. Results: A total of 1,031 patients were included in the analysis, 227 (22%) of whom were female. Female patients had a higher rate of extravesical disease extension (P = 0.01). After the administration of NAC, ypT stage was equally distributed between sexes (P = 0.39). On multivariable logistic regression analyses, there was no difference between the sexes or age of menopause with regards to ypT0N0 rates or downstaging (all P > 0.5). On Cox regression analyses, sex was associated with neither overall survival (hazard ratio 1.04, 95% confidence interval 0.75–1.45, P = 0.81) nor cancer-specific survival (hazard ratio 1.06, 95% confidence interval 0.71–1.58, P = 0.77). Conclusion: Our study generates the hypothesis that NAC equalizes the preoperative disparity in pathologic stage between males and females suggesting a possible differential response between sexes. This might be the explanation underlying the comparable survival outcomes between sexes despite females presenting with more advanced tumor stage.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio