Protección Antigua y Nueva: Una Revisión Histórica

The old debate between free trade and protection, at an intellectual level, has been resolved in a way that is satisfactory for many people, but it continues to be an issue in public discussion and in policy design. The ebb and f low of protectionist move

Fiscal Decentralisation: The Swiss Case

Switzerland provides a potential laboratory for testing various hypotheses connected with tax competition because of its extremely decentralized fiscal system. Twenty-six cantons (some of them extremely small) have retained the ultimate power of deciding tax questions, and hence not only to limit the Federal level of the State to about 1/3 of total public expenditure, but also to retain absolute power to set their own levels of taxation. Furthermore, citizens can launch referenda on tax issues at any level of government.Fiscal competition between cantons should therefore be easy to spot, resulting in lower tax cantons enjoying higher economic growth (the classical hypothesis), or in a race to the bottom with lower tax cantons offering a lower level of public services (the harmful competition hypothesis). In fact, neither of these hypotheses is confirmed. This leads the author to suggest a third hypothesis based on public choice theory (politicians in high-income cantons are led to raise high taxes). The author suggests that the classical and the public choice hypotheses cancel each other out, leaving a mixed picture. The article ends with some reflexions on the implications of the Swiss experience for fiscal harmonization at a European level.La Suisse offre un véritable laboratoire pour tester plusieurs hypothèses de concurrence fiscale en raison de son système fiscal extrêmement décentralisé. Vingt six cantons (dont quelques uns très petits) ont conservé le pouvoir suprême de décider les questions fiscales et, donc, non seulement de limiter le niveau fédéral de lEtat à 1/3 des dépenses publiques totales, mais aussi de conserver le pouvoir absolu pour fixer leurs propres niveaux de taxation. De plus, les habitants peuvent lancer des référendums en matière fiscale à tout niveau du gouvernement.La concurrence fiscale entre les cantons devrait être par conséquent plus facile à repérer, les cantons les moins imposés ayant une croissance économique supérieure (hypothèse classique), ou en un > face aux cantons les moins imposés offrant un niveau inférieur de services publics (hypothèse de concurrence néfaste). En fait, aucune de ces hypothèses nest confirmée. Cela conduit lauteur à suggérer une troisième hypothèse basée sur la théorie des décisions publiques (les politiciens des cantons à revenus élevés sont conduits à lever des impôts élevés). Lauteur suggère que les hypothèses classiques et celles des décisions publiques se neutralisent lune lautre, laissant place à un modèle mixte. Larticle se termine par quelques réflexions quant aux implications de lexpérience Suisse pour une harmonisation fiscale au niveau europée

The British Tax System: Opposing Trends

This article points to the highly centralized nature of the British tax system. A first section shows how all tax law derives from Parliament, the onlie begetter of legally enforceable instruments. It is suggested that this system is not democratically accountable at sub-national levels of government. Reforms of the Thatcher era have resulted in the privatization of many public services, leading to the stabilization of State expenditure as a proportion of GDP. However, at the same time, both tax revenue and expenditure have become increasingly centralized. Public service tasks are determined and financed by central government, and local government is for the most part merely the agent through which government policy is realized. The creation of the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies does not alter this overall assessment. Given the high level of centralization, taxes are uniform throughout the country and there is no scope for meaningful regional fiscal competition. Since regional economic development in Britain is notoriously uneven, the author notes that fiscal uniformity does not lead to economic convergence. A final section is devoted to showing why this is not surprising and why fiscal harmonisation at a European level would be a source of growing, not reduced, disparities.Cet article met laccent sur la nature hautement centralisée du système fiscal britannique. Une première section montre comment toutes les lois fiscales proviennent du Parlement, la source unique des instruments légaux exécutoires. Nous considérons que ce système nest pas démocrat- iquement defendable aux niveaux subnationaux de gouvernement. Les réformes de lère Thatcher ont conduit à une privatisation de beaucoup de services publics, entrainant une stabilisation des dépenses de lEtat en pourcentage du PIB. Cependant, dans le meme temps, à la fois les recettes fiscales et les dépenses sont devenues de plus en plus centralisées. Les taches du service public sont définies et financées par le gouvernement central et le gouvernement local est dans la majeure partie des cas lagent à travers lequel la politique du gouvernement sexerce. La creation des Assemblées Ecossaises et galloises ne modifie pas cette evaluation densemble. Etant donné le niveau élevé de centralisation, les impôts sont uniformes à travers le pays et il ny a pas de possibilité pour une concurrence fiscale régionale significative. Alors que le développement économique regional en Grande Bretagne est notoirement inégal, lauteur remarque que luniformité fiscale ne conduit pas à uneconvergence économique. Une section finale est consacrée à montrer pourquoi cela nest en rien surprenant et pourquoi lharmonisation fiscale à un niveau européen serait une source de disparités croissantes, et non décroissante

Index of Fiscal Decentralisation: Methodology and Findings

The Index of Fiscal Decentralisation (IFD) could be a very helpful quantitative instrument while radical changes in European organisation are just now coming. The IFD permits a comparison between fifteen European countries (including Switzerland). It is based on five variables indicative of the respective weights of central and local governments: how is allocated the total amount of fiscal revenues and spending, which level has the power to determine the tax base, the tax rates and types of taxation, as well as the way they are used, what is the possibility for taxpayers to control and to take legal proceedings at different levels?The results make clear that in most of the European countries (except Switzerland) the fiscal centralisation is high, and that there is wide deviation of the index. So the prospect of a fiscal harmonisation seems to be very weak in the short term. The paper leads to the concept of fiscal coherence: the worst situation is that of taxation designed and collected at one level, and of spending at another one. Hence actors in the fiscal system are irresponsible and taxpayers powerless.Lindice de décentralisation fiscale est un instrument de mesure particulièrement appréciable au moment où un changement radical intervient dans lorganisation de lEurope. Il permet de comparer quinze pays européens (dont la Suisse). Il est construit à partir de cinq variables significatives des poids respectifs des administrations centrales et locales : comment se répartit la masse des recettes et des dépenses, qui détient le pouvoir de décision sur les assiettes, les taux et les modalités des prélèvements et lusage qui en est fait, quelles sont les possibilités de contrôle et de recours des contribuables aux différents niveaux ? Les résultats font apparaître un niveau plutôt élevé de centralisation dans la plupart des pays (la Suisse étant la seule exception notable), et une forte dispersion de lindice.Les perspectives dune harmonisation fiscale semblent donc très réduites à court terme. Létude débouche sur le concept de > : la pire des situations est celle où les prélèvem- ents sont décidés à un niveau, et les dépenses à un autre ; les acteurs de la fiscalité sont alors irresponsables et les contribuables impuissant

Towards a formalism for mapping the spacetimes of massive compact objects: Bumpy black holes and their orbits

Observations have established that extremely compact, massive objects are common in the universe. It is generally accepted that these objects are black holes. As observations improve, it becomes possible to test this hypothesis in ever greater detail. In particular, it is or will be possible to measure the properties of orbits deep in the strong field of a black hole candidate (using x-ray timing or with gravitational-waves) and to test whether they have the characteristics of black hole orbits in general relativity. Such measurements can be used to map the spacetime of a massive compact object, testing whether the object's multipoles satisfy the strict constraints of the black hole hypothesis. Such a test requires that we compare against objects with the ``wrong'' multipole structure. In this paper, we present tools for constructing bumpy black holes: objects that are almost black holes, but that have some multipoles with the wrong value. The spacetimes which we present are good deep into the strong field of the object -- we do not use a large r expansion, except to make contact with weak field intuition. Also, our spacetimes reduce to the black hole spacetimes of general relativity when the ``bumpiness'' is set to zero. We propose bumpy black holes as the foundation for a null experiment: if black hole candidates are the black holes of general relativity, their bumpiness should be zero. By comparing orbits in a bumpy spacetime with those of an astrophysical source, observations should be able to test this hypothesis, stringently testing whether they are the black holes of general relativity. (Abridged)Comment: 16 pages + 2 appendices + 3 figures. Submitted to PR

Exploring medical device design and use through layers of distributed cognition: How a glucometer is coupled with its context

cmtheme: cmoutput: journalcmtheme: cmoutput: journalThis work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/G059063/1]

Understanding a language of ‘aristocracy’, 1700-1850

This article engages with current debates about linguistic usage but in a new way. It examines linguistic change, the shifts in frequency of usage of ‘aristocracy,’ both qualitatively and quantitatively, at specific moments and over time, in print of the period 1700 to 1850. Digital resources are utilized to provide broad quantitative evidence not previously available to historians. The potential use and value of digitized sources is also explored in calculating the volume and frequency of keyword appearance within a broad set of genres. This article also examines qualitatively usage of ‘aristocracy’ by contemporaries and historians and concludes that historians have often used the term anachronistically. It reveals that for much of the eighteenth century ‘aristocracy’ was entirely a political term confined primarily to the educated elite but that by 1850 it had become a common social descriptor of an elite class. It also compares the trajectory of usage of ‘aristocracy’ with that of ‘democracy’ and accounts for the divergence in such usage. It is argued here that analyzing the prevalence and usage of ‘aristocracy’ in contemporary contexts reveals an important narrative of linguistic changes that parallel shifts in political and social culture

The new Victorians? Celebrity charity and the demise of the welfare state

This article asks whether the expansion of celebrity involvement in charitable and humanitarian issues in Northern Europe and the US might be a comparable historical phenomenon with the philanthropic endeavours of prominent nineteenth-century persons. The article notes that the conspicuous nature of star philanthropy in both Victorian times and the present is fairly dramatic in comparison with that of the mid twentieth century, when the welfare state and the New Deal were at their peak: a welfare-oriented era which, to some, now increasingly looks like a ‘historical blip’. It asks whether the rise of contemporary celebrity involvement in charity can therefore be explained in terms of the contemporary political conjuncture, inasmuch as celebrities could be understood as individuals with large amounts of private capital seeking to intervene in – and gain forms of power through – involvement in humanitarian and charitable causes that might have formerly been the job of the state. Can celebrity involvement in charity be explained in these terms? Does the marriage of celebrity and charity today take a neoliberal form, one that parallels the liberal form of nineteenth-century interventions, bequests and donations? What might the key differences between forms of spectacular ‘philanthrocapitalism’ in these eras (particularly the contemporary insistence on the confessional and intimate modes of address) reveal about its workings, its internal traditions and about the specificity of our own age? This article draws on contemporary media discourse, debate in the voluntary sector, historical scholarship and Foucault’s distinctions between liberalism and neoliberalism to argue that whereas ‘celanthropy’ in the Victorian period eventually came to contribute to the welfare state, today it is more involved in privatising and dismantling it