Measuring Effective Tax Rates on Human Capital: Methodology and an Application to Canada

This paper examines the impacts of a wide range of tax provisions on the incentive to invest in human capital, and shows how these effects can be quantified using effective tax rates, or ETRs. For individuals with median earnings, ETRs on the human capital formed in first-degree university study are sizeable, although not as large as those estimated by previous authors for physical capital in Canada. When the expenditure side and its direct subsidies are also taken into account, the net effective tax rate on human capital becomes negative. The taxation of human capital is far from uniform. ETRs vary by income level, gender, part-time vs. full-time study, whether students have loans, number of dependants, and use of RESPs. The most significant differences are those related to income level. Workers at higher percentile levels of the earnings distribution throughout life may face ETRs three times as high as those for low-income workers – a result of our progressive income tax system.

The production of quick scoping reviews and rapid evidence assessments: a how to guide

This document contains a brief overview of the different Evidence Reviews (ER) but is written primarily for those intending to commission and/or produce an ER in the form of Quick Scoping Reviews (QSR) or Rapid Evidence Assessments (REA), that lie between literature reviews and SRs in terms of rigour of assessment. These have been found to be well suited to meet the evidence challenges most frequently faced by the authors in meeting policy and practice evidence requirements

Difference in quality of life of referred hospital patients after hospital palliative care team intervention

In 2001 Selma Browde created an expanded definition of palliative medicine in South Africa that reads as follows: ‘Palliative Care supplies active comprehensive care for the physical, emotional, psychosocial and spiritual suffering of the patient and the family. It starts at the moment of first contact with the patient with any illness at any stage and continues for the duration of the illness. If and when the illness becomes incurable, Palliative Care then plays the major or total role.’1 In the same year, Browde established a hospital palliative care team (HPCT) at the Johannesburg General Hospital. There are now six such teams in South Africa, yet no systematic evaluation had been carried out before this research

Taxation through time: an intertemporal assessment of the taxation of human capital in Atlantic Canada

We examine the (dis)incentive effects created by the respective tax systems to invest in human capital in Atlantic Canada and compare this to a select group of provinces from the rest of Canada. While findings show a steady decline in effective tax rates through the years, thereby creating an incentive effect to invest in post-secondary education, disproportionately higher rate gap differentials in the Atlantic Provinces, on average, combined with negative comparative statics reveal a somewhat different undertone. The counterproductive nature of the competing policies effectively nullifies any status quo argument for education or tax policy in the Atlantic Provinces, when compared to their brethren. The graduate retention rebate provides some solace to the narrative in helping to alleviate early tax burdens and equalize returns, but is difficult to claim effectiveness in assuaging any monetary windfall associated with migration

Laccase activity from the fungus trametes hirsuta using an air-lift bioreactor

Aim: To produce high laccase activities from the white-rot fungus Trametes hirsuta in an in-house air-lift bioreactor (ALB). Methods and Results: Trametes hirsuta was grown in a 6-l ALB. A fed-batch strategy with glycerol as an addition resulted in maximum laccase activity of 19 400 U l)1, which was the highest reported from the fungus. Conclusion: The ALB configuration with additional glycerol resulted in high laccase activities. Significance and Impact of the Study: This study provides useful information on how to produce high concentrations of laccase.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)University of Vigo (SpainDepartment of Biological Engineering of the University of Minho, Portuga

Risk and charitable organizations: the case of Atlantic Canada

Using panel data from 2003-2010 on charitable organizations in Canada we explore the implications that exposure to risk, in various guises, has on organizations' ability to meet their mandate. We run a random effects panel estimation focusing our attention on the case of Atlantic Canada in an effort to explore the idiosyncrasies that make it an interesting case study, and a microcosm of sorts for producing risk metrics in general. A comparative analysis is provided with the Canadian charitable sector as a whole to contrast the results and afford a context for discussion. Results suggest that diversification in revenue streams may in fact increase risk for charitable firms; and comprehensive modeling techniques, which categorize the entire Canadian market quite well, lead to increased noise in estimating exposure to risk for Atlantic Canada firms. The latter seem somewhat more sensitive to exogenous economic changes, when compared to the entire marketplace

The role of Google Scholar in evidence reviews and its applicability to grey literature searching

Google Scholar (GS), a commonly used web-based academic search engine, catalogues between 2 and 100 million records of both academic and grey literature (articles not formally published by commercial academic publishers). Google Scholar collates results from across the internet and is free to use. As a result it has received considerable attention as a method for searching for literature, particularly in searches for grey literature, as required by systematic reviews. The reliance on GS as a standalone resource has been greatly debated, however, and its efficacy in grey literature searching has not yet been investigated. Using systematic review case studies from environmental science, we investigated the utility of GS in systematic reviews and in searches for grey literature. Our findings show that GS results contain moderate amounts of grey literature, with the majority found on average at page 80. We also found that, when searched for specifically, the majority of literature identified using Web of Science was also found using GS. However, our findings showed moderate/poor overlap in results when similar search strings were used in Web of Science and GS (10–67%), and that GS missed some important literature in five of six case studies. Furthermore, a general GS search failed to find any grey literature from a case study that involved manual searching of organisations’ websites. If used in systematic reviews for grey literature, we recommend that searches of article titles focus on the first 200 to 300 results. We conclude that whilst Google Scholar can find much grey literature and specific, known studies, it should not be used alone for systematic review searches. Rather, it forms a powerful addition to other traditional search methods. In addition, we advocate the use of tools to transparently document and catalogue GS search results to maintain high levels of transparency and the ability to be updated, critical to systematic reviews