Impact of VAT Exemptions in the Postal Sector on Competition and Welfare

The focus of our paper is on the competitive effects of the proposed VAT regime relative to selected alternatives. We also highlight the welfare effects of various VAT scenarios. While an exempt operator cannot reclaim VAT paid on inputs (relevant for non-labor inputs only) and therefore faces higher costs ceteris paribus, an important fraction of customers of non-exempt operators will not be able to deduct VAT themselves. Hence, the exempt incumbent operator has on the one hand a cost disadvantage, and on the other, a price advantage. The net effect will depend on the fraction of non-labor inputs relative to the fraction of non-rated customers. We report market shares, optimum prices, tax revenue and welfare in a liberalized postal market. The various scenarios differ by the operators’ VAT status. We also take into account the fraction of non-rated customers that cannot deduct VAT themselves. The paper sheds light on the main competitive impact of VAT policies while showing the consequences on overall welfare. We show that the results are very sensitive to the operators’ labor policies. Consequently, VAT exemptions have a different impact in countries with different labor regulations. The comprehensive treatment of competition and welfare enables us to provide guidance on how to resolve the policy trade-off between consumer surplus, government tax revenue, and a level playing field in liberalized postal markets.Value Added Taxation, Regulation, Post, Competition, Welfare

Deregulation of Letter Markets and its Impact on Process and Product Innovation

Does the European model of end-to-end competition or the US model of worksharing provide stronger innovation incentives for incumbent postal operators? We answer this question based on a two stage model with price competition and product differentiation. We find that incentives for process innovation in the upstream activities are stronger under end-to-end competition. Incentives for process innovation in delivery are stronger under worksharing, assuming that the entrant's demand under worksharing is higher than the decline in the incumbent's demand. Regarding product innovation, incentives depend on the access pric

The social structure of signing communities and lexical variation:A cross-linguistic comparison of three unrelated sign languages

Claims have been made about the relationship between the degree of lexical variation and the social structure of a sign language community (e.g., population size), but to date there exist no large-scale cross-linguistic comparisons to address these claims. In this study, we present a cross-linguistic analysis of lexical variation in three signing communities: Kata Kolok, Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and British Sign Language (BSL). Contrary to the prediction that BSL would have the lowest degree of lexical variation because it has the largest population size, we found that BSL has the highest degree of lexical variation across the entire community (i.e., at the global level). We find, however, that BSL has the lowest degree of lexical variation at the local level, i.e., within clusters of participants who group most similarly lexically. Kata Kolok and ISL, on the other hand, exhibit less of a distinction between variation at the global and local levels, suggesting that lexical variation does not pattern as strongly within subsets of these two communities as does BSL. The results of this study require us to reassess claims made about lexical variation and community structure; we need to move towards an approach of studying (lexical) variation which treats communities equally on a theoretical level and which respects the unique social-demographic profile of each community when designing the analysis by using a community-centered approach.</p

Development of sign phonology in Kata Kolok

Much like early speech, early signing is characterised by modifications. Sign language phonology has been analysed on the feature level since the 1980s, yet acquisition studies predominately examine handshape, location, and movement. This study is the first to analyse the acquisition of phonology in the sign language of a Balinese village with a vibrant signing community and applies the same feature analysis to adult and child data. We analyse longitudinal data of four deaf children from the Kata Kolok Child Signing Corpus. The form comparison of child productions and adult targets yields three main findings: i) handshape modifications are most frequent, echoing cross-linguistic patterns; ii) modification rates of other features differ from previous studies, possibly due to differences in methodology or KK’s phonology; iii) co-occurrence of modifications within a sign suggest feature interdependencies. We argue that nuanced approaches to child signing are necessary to understand the complexity of early signing

Tourist’s understanding of sustainable tourism An analysis in eight countries

The goal of this study is to learn moreabout tourists’ understanding of sustainable tourism.The empirical survey with over 6,000 respondents ineight countries identifies the most relevant aspects ofsustainable tourism from a tourists’ perspective.Overall the perception is balanced over the differentdimensions. Furthermore, five different typesregarding tourists’ understanding of sustainabletourism are identified in a cluster analysis and apotential market size of sustainable tourism of 22%of all tourists can be identified

Social structure and lexical uniformity: A case study of gender differences in the Kata Kolok community

Language emergence is characterized by a high degree of lex- ical variation. It has been suggested that the speed at which lexical conventionalization occurs depends partially on social structure. In large communities, individuals receive input from many sources, creating a pressure for lexical convergence. In small, insular communities, individuals can remember id- iolects and share common ground with interlocuters, allow- ing these communities to retain a high degree of lexical vari- ation. We look at lexical variation in Kata Kolok, a sign lan- guage which emerged six generations ago in a Balinese vil- lage, where women tend to have more tightly-knit social net- works than men. We test if there are differing degrees of lexical uniformity between women and men by reanalyzing a picture description task in Kata Kolok. We find that women’s produc- tions exhibit less lexical uniformity than men’s. One possible explanation of this finding is that women’s more tightly-knit social networks allow for remembering idiolects, alleviating the pressure for lexical convergence, but social network data from the Kata Kolok community is needed to support this ex- planation