The pervasive effects of high taxation of capital goods in India

India's heavy duties on capital goods blur the incentive signals from the tariff structure. In practice, that structure favors import substitution of intermediate products from heavy industry and discourages exports. The complex protection structure should be simplified, with priority to slashing the duties on capital goods. The purpose of this paper is to contribute further to the existing studies by analyzing the international dynamics of the protection structure on the basis of recent data valid for the late 1980s. The project data were assembled with a view to providing quantitative indications, and answers to the following questions: (a) What are the respective profitabilities of the domestic and international markets for Indian industries?; (b) How much of Indian industry's lack of international competitiveness stems from the extra costs paid for inputs?; (c) What is the impact of India's investment costs, grossed-up by duties and taxes on imported equipment and by higher prices of domestic machinery, on the value added and the effectiveprotection of Indian industry?; (d) What is the minimum level of nominal protection required by Indian industry to compensate for the extra costs paid for its inputs and investments?; and (e) To which extent are the actual nominal and effective protections received by Indian industry in concordance with the levels of protection stemming from items (c) and (d) above?Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Globalization and Financial Integration

The outer regions of galaxy clusters: Chandra constraints on the X-ray surface brightness

(Abridged version) We study the properties of the X-ray surface brightness profiles in a sample of galaxy clusters that were observed with Chandra and have emission detectable with a signal-to-noise ratio higher than 2 at a radius beyond R500 ~ 0.7 R200. Our study aims to measure the slopes of the X-ray surface brightness and of the gas density profiles in the outskirts of massive clusters. These constraints are compared to similar results obtained from observations and numerical simulations of the temperature and dark matter density profiles with the intention of presenting a consistent picture of the outer regions of galaxy clusters. We extract the surface brightness profiles Sb(r) of 52 X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at z>0.3 from X-ray exposures obtained with Chandra. We estimate R200 using both a beta-model that reproduces Sb(r) and scaling relations from the literature. The two methods converge to comparable values. We determine the radius, R_S2N, at which the signal-to-noise ratio is larger than 2 and select the objects in the sample that satisfy the criterion R_S2N/R200 > 0.7. For the eleven selected objects, we model with a power-law the behaviour of Sb(r). We measure a consistent steepening of the Sb(r) profile moving outward from 0.4 R200, where an average slope of -3.6 (sigma=0.8) is estimated. At R200, we evaluate a slope of -4.3 (sigma=0.9) that implies a slope in the gas density profile of -2.6 and a predicted mean value of the surface brightness in the 0.5-2 band of 2e-12 erg/s/cm2/deg2. Combined with estimates of the outer slope of the gas temperature profile and expectations about the dark matter distribution, these measurements allow us to describe properly how X-ray luminous clusters behave out to the virial radius.Comment: 7 pages. A&A in press. Minor revisions to match published version: added references, corrected typo

Comparing Masses in Literature (CoMaLit)-I. Bias and scatter in weak lensing and X-ray mass estimates of clusters

The first building block to use galaxy clusters in astrophysics and cosmology is the accurate determination of their mass. Two of the most well regarded direct mass estimators are based on weak lensing (WL) determinations or X-ray analyses assuming hydrostatic equilibrium (HE). By comparing these two mass measurements in samples of rich clusters, we determined the intrinsic scatters, $\sigma_\mathrm{WL}\sim$15 per cent for WL masses and $\sigma_\mathrm{HE}\sim$25 per cent for HE masses. The certain assessment of the bias is hampered by differences as large as $\sim$40 per cent in either WL or HE mass estimates reported by different groups. If the intrinsic scatter in the mass estimate is not considered, the slope of any scaling relation `observable--mass' is biased towards shallower values, whereas the intrinsic scatter of the scaling is over-estimated.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; v2: 16 pages, 8 figures, MNRAS in press; results unchanged; extended presentation of the statistical method and of the correlations; products from the CoMaLit series are hosted and updated at http://pico.bo.astro.it/~sereno/CoMaLi

Measure and interpretation of effective protection in the presence of high capital costs : evidence from India

This paper is derived from a previous working paper prepared within a comprehensive review of India's trade regime and protection policies. One striking feature of India's protection structure has been the very high tariffs and protection on capital goods, thereby harming industrial competitiveness (and export potential) and distorting industrial incentives as they are indicated by Effective Protection Rates (EPRs). This paper presents three main themes. First, it provides a brief refresher on the definition of EPR and its limited interpretation as a measure of the scope for inefficiency or extra-profit resulting from protection, with a simple geometrical representation. In the second part, the paper introduces the notions and formulae of Corrected Effective Protection Rates (CEPR) and Net Effective Protection (NEPR), also with a geometrical representation. Finally, the paper tests the relevance of these notions, and assesses their magnitude -- in the case of India on the basis of a sample of some 60 industrial projects. A brief conclusion summarizes the major findings and draws some tentative conclusions.Globalization and Financial Integration,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform

Chandra constraints on the thermal conduction in the intracluster plasma of A2142

In this Letter, we use the recent Chandra observation of A2142 reported by Markevitch et al. to put constraints on thermal conduction in the intracluster plasma. We show that the observed sharp temperature gradient requires that classical conductivity has to be reduced at least by a factor of between 250 and 2500. The result provides a direct constraint on an important physical process relevant to the gas in the cores of clusters of galaxies.Comment: 3 pages. To appear in MNRA

X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich scaling relations in galaxy clusters

[Abridged] We present an analysis of the scaling relations between X-ray properties and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) parameters for a sample of 24 X-ray luminous galaxy clusters observed with Chandra and with measured SZ effect. These objects are in the redshift range 0.14--0.82 and have X-ray bolometric luminosity L>10^45 erg/s. We perform a spatially resolved spectral analysis and recover the density, temperature and pressure profiles of the ICM, just relying on the spherical symmetry of the cluster and the hydrostatic equilibrium hypothesis. We observe that the correlations among X-ray quantities only are in agreement with previous results obtained for samples of high-z X-ray luminous galaxy clusters. On the relations involving SZ quantities, we obtain that they correlate with the gas temperature with a logarithmic slope significantly larger than the predicted value from the self-similar model. The measured scatter indicates, however, that the central Compton parameter y_0 is a proxy of the gas temperature at the same level of other X-ray quantities like luminosity. Our results on the X-ray and SZ scaling relations show a tension between the quantities more related to the global energy of the system (e.g. gas temperature, gravitating mass) and the indicators of the structure of the ICM (e.g. gas density profile, central Compton parameter y_0), showing the most significant deviations from the values of the slope predicted from the self-similar model in the L-T, L-M_{tot}, M_{gas}-T, y_0-T relations. When the slope is fixed to the self-similar value, these relations consistently show a negative evolution suggesting a scenario in which the ICM at higher redshift has lower both X-ray luminosity and pressure in the central regions than the expectations from self-similar model.Comment: MNRAS in press - Minor revision to match published versio