Corruption, public finances, and the unofficial economy

The authors found that, in post-communist economies, the unofficial economy's share of GDP is determined by the extent of control rights held by bureaucrats and politicians. Exploring in detail the role of taxation and bribery, and using data from an expanded data set of 49 Latin American, OECD, and transition economies, the authors find that the unofficial economy accounts for a larger share of GDP where there is great bureaucratic inefficiency and discretion, and where firms experience a greater tax and regulatory burden, as well as more bribery and corruption. The unofficial economy is also much larger where there is less state revenue and where the rule of law is weak. They also find that countries with a larger unofficial economy tend to grow more slowly. Thus, this framework suggests an additional channel whereby corruption and ineffective regulatory and tax administration can result in lower growth: the unofficial economy. Wealthy OECD economies and some Eastern European economies find themselves the"good equilibrium"of relatively low regulatory and tax burden (not necessarily low statutory tax rates), sizable revenue mobilization, good rule of law and control of corruption, and a small unofficial economy. Several countries in Latin America and the former Soviet Union exhibit characteristics consistent with a"bad equilibrium": the discretionary application of heavy regulatory and tax burdens, the weakrule of law, heavy bribery, and an active unofficial economy. In this large country sample (unlike in the earlier framework for transition economies only), the authors find that it is the ineffective and discretionary application of regulatory and tax regimes in many countries -- not higher tax rates by itself -- that increase the size of the unofficial economy. The tax burden reported by firms appears to be more a function of regulatory and bureaucratic inefficiency and discretion rather than of tax rates alone.Environmental Economics&Policies,Knowledge Economy,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,Governance Indicators

UK voters, including Leavers, care more about reducing non-EU than EU migration

Despite the argument that Brexit was about sovereignty and only secondarily about immigration, new data suggest otherwise. Simon Hix, Eric Kaufmann, and Thomas J. Leeper show the importance of reducing immigration levels – especially from outside the EU – to British voters

Pricing immigration

Immigration is highly salient for voters in Europe and the United States and has generated considerable academic debate about the causes of preferences over immigration. This debate centers around the relative influences of sociotropic or personal economic considerations, as well as non-economic threats. We provide a test of the competing egocentric, sociotropic, and non-economic paradigms using a novel constrained preference experiment in which respondents are asked to trade-off preferred reductions in immigration levels with realistic estimates of the personal or societal costs associated with those reductions. This survey experiment, per- formed on a national sample of British YouGov panelists, allows us to measure the price-elasticity of the public’s preferences with regard to levels of European and non-European immigration. Respondents were willing to admit more immigrants when restriction carries economic costs, with egocentric considerations as important as sociotropic ones. People who voted for the UK to Leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum are less price-elastic than those voting Remain, indicating that non-economic concerns are also important

Virtuoso: High Resource Utilization and {\mu}s-scale Performance Isolation in a Shared Virtual Machine TCP Network Stack

Virtualization improves resource efficiency and ensures security and performance isolation for cloud applications. To that end, operators today use a layered architecture that runs a separate network stack instance in each VM and container connected to a separate virtual switch. Decoupling through layering reduces complexity, but induces performance and resource overheads that are at odds with increasing demands for network bandwidth, communication requirements for large distributed applications, and low latency. We present Virtuoso, a new software networking stack for VMs and containers. Virtuoso performs a fundamental re-organization of the networking stack to maximize CPU utilization, enforce isolation, and minimize networking stack overheads. We maximize utilization by running one elastically shared network stack instance on dedicated cores; we enforce isolation by performing central and fine-grained per-packet resource accounting and scheduling; we reduce overheads by building a single-layer data path with a one-shot fast-path incorporating all processing from the TCP transport layer through network virtualization and virtual switching. Virtuoso improves resource utilization by up to 50%, latencies by up to 42% compared to other virtualized network stacks without sacrificing isolation, and keeps processing overhead within 11.5% of unvirtualized network stacks.Comment: Under submission for conference peer revie

Algorithms and Insights for RaceTrack

We discuss algorithmic issues on the well-known paper-and-pencil game RaceTrack. On a very simple track called Indianapolis, we introduce the problem and simple approaches, that will be gradually refined. We present and experimentally evaluate efficient algorithms for single player scenarios. We also consider a variant where the parts of the track are known as soon as they become visible during the race

Педагогические технологии как дидактический инструментарий подготовки специалиста в инженерном вузе

Рассмотрено понятие педагогической технологии, раскрыта сущность контекстной и задачной технологий, обоснован выбор технологий, адекватных профилю инженерного образования

HIF mediated and DNA damage independent histone H2AX phosphorylation in chronic hypoxia

The histone variant 2AX (H2AX) is phosphorylated at Serine 139 by the PI3K-like kinase family members ATM, ATR and DNA-PK. Genotoxic stress, such as tumor radio- and chemotherapy, is considered to be the main inducer of phosphorylated H2AX (γH2AX), which forms distinct foci at sites of DNA damage where DNA repair factors accumulate. γH2AX accumulation under severe hypoxic/anoxic (0.02% oxygen) conditions has recently been reported to follow replication fork stalling in the absence of detectable DNA damage. In this study, we found HIF-dependent accumulation of γH2AX in several cancer cell lines and mouse embryonic fibroblasts exposed to physiologically relevant chronic hypoxia (0.2% oxygen), which did not induce detectable levels of DNA strand breaks. The hypoxic accumulation of γH2AX was delayed by the RNAi-mediated knockdown of HIF-1α or HIF-2α and further decreased when both HIF-αs were absent. Conversely, basal phosphorylation of H2AX was increased in cells with constitutively stabilized HIF-2α. These results suggest that both HIF-1 and HIF-2 are involved in γH2AX accumulation by tumor hypoxia, which might increase a cancer cell's capacity to repair DNA damage, contributing to tumor therapy resistanc

Intracellular localization of the BCL-2 family member BOK and functional implications

The pro-apoptotic BCL-2 family member BOK is widely expressed and resembles the multi-BH domain proteins BAX and BAK based on its amino acid sequence. The genomic region encoding BOK was reported to be frequently deleted in human cancer and it has therefore been hypothesized that BOK functions as a tumor suppressor. However, little is known about the molecular functions of BOK. We show that enforced expression of BOK activates the intrinsic (mitochondrial) apoptotic pathway in BAX/BAK-proficient cells but fails to kill cells lacking both BAX and BAK or sensitize them to cytotoxic insults. Interestingly, major portions of endogenous BOK are localized to and partially inserted into the membranes of the Golgi apparatus as well as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and associated membranes. The C-terminal transmembrane domain of BOK thereby constitutes a 'tail-anchor' specific for targeting to the Golgi and ER. Overexpression of full-length BOK causes early fragmentation of ER and Golgi compartments. A role for BOK on the Golgi apparatus and the ER is supported by an abnormal response of Bok-deficient cells to the Golgi/ER stressor brefeldin A. Based on these results, we propose that major functions of BOK are exerted at the Golgi and ER membranes and that BOK induces apoptosis in a manner dependent on BAX and BAK

Особенности обогащения углей с большим содержанием легкоразмокаемой породы

Наведені результати дослідження технологічних процесів при збагаченні вугілля з великим вмістом породи, яка легко розмокає, умовах ЦЗФ "Павлоградська". Визначенні особливості ведення технологічних процесів підготовки машинних класів важкосередовищної сепарації. відсадки, флотації. обробки шламових продуктів та сушіння дрібного концентрату, які відрізняються від загальноприйнятих.Приведены результаты исследований технологический процессов при обогащении углей с большим содержанием легкоразмокаемой породы в условиях ЦОФ "Павлоградская". Определены особенности ведения технологических процессов подготовки машинных классов, тяжелосредной сепарации, отсадки, флотации, обработки шламовых продуктов и сушки мелкого концентрата, которые отличаются от общепринятых