Information sharing, bank penetration and tax evasion in emerging markets

Tax evasion, which is typically considered an illegal activity, is a critical problem and is considered a barrier to economic growth. A review of the literature shows that tax and social security contributions, regulations, public sector services, the quality of institutions and tax compliance, play important roles in determining the degree to which firms attempt to evade taxes. Measuring tax evasion is problematic due to data requirements and inadequacies. Few tax evasion indices have been estimated but it appears that they cannot be used for international comparisons across countries. This important issue has largely been ignored in the literature, in particular for emerging markets. Consequently, this paper is conducted to develop a new tax evasion index (TEI) using the most substantial and recent data from the standardized World Bank Enterprises Survey 2006–2017. In addition, using the newly developed TEI, the paper examines the importance and contribution of information sharing and bank penetration to the degree of tax evasion in emerging markets. The paper uses a sample of 112 emerging markets from 2006–2017 and the Tobit model in estimation. The empirical findings from the paper indicate that the average TEI during the 2006– 2017 period for emerging markets is 0.62, with a range of (0.25, 0.75). In addition, we find that information sharing and bank penetration negatively affect the degree of tax evasion, as proxied by the TEI, in emerging markets. The empirical results also confirm the view that large firms are considered to have adopted good tax compliance practices, while firms located in remote areas are more likely to evade taxes. Policy implications have emerged on the basis of the empirical findings from the paper

Photo-physiology and morphology reveal divergent warming responses in northern and southern hemisphere seagrasses

En prensa2,01

Establishment of a Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Registry in Vietnam: Rationale and Methodology

Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). Background: In lower- and middle-income countries across Asia there has been a rapid expansion and uptake of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, there has been limited routine collection of related data, particularly around quality, safety and cost. The aim of this study was to assess the viability of implementing routine collection of PCI data in a registry at a leading hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. Method: A Vietnamese data collection form and collection strategy were developed in collaboration with the Vietnam National Heart Institute. Information on patient characteristics, treatments, and outcomes was collected through direct interviews using a standardised form and medical record abstraction, while PCI data was read and coded into paper forms by interventional cardiologists. Viability of the registry was determined by four main factors: 1) being able to collect a representative sample; 2) quality of data obtained; 3) costs and time taken for data collection by hospital staff; and 4) level of support from key stakeholders in the institute. Results: Between September 2017 and May 2018, 1,022 patients undergoing PCI were recruited from a total of 1,041 procedures conducted during that time frame. The estimated mean time to collect information from patients before discharge was 60 minutes. Of the collected data fields, 98% were successfully completed. Most hospital staff surveyed indicated support for the continuation of the activity following the implementation of the pilot study. Conclusions: The proposed methodology for establishing a PCI registry in a large hospital in Vietnam produced high quality data and was considered worthwhile by hospital staff. The model has the potential opportunity for replication in other cardiac catheterisation sites, leading to a national PCI registry in Vietnam

Study on N-NH4+ removal from underground water by MBBR case study in Bach Khoa Ward, Hanoi, Vietnam

Moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) using porous carrier plastic material, Polyurethane (DHY-1) which has high porosity 92% -96%, has been researched and applied in many water treatment systems. The advantage of the material is that it has high surface area of about 6,000-12,000m2/m3 thereby increasing the density of biomass. In this research, they were tried to treat ammonium nitrogen (N-NH4+) in the ground water. It was found that the treatment efficiency was more than 90% with N-NH4+ concentration of 10-12mg/l. Different densities of carrier materials as well as different influent flow rates have significant impacts on the removal efficiency. The study showed that treatment capacity decreased with high influent flow rate while increased with high density of carrier materials

Enhancement of near-cloaking. Part II: the Helmholtz equation

The aim of this paper is to extend the method of improving cloaking structures in the conductivity to scattering problems. We construct very effective near-cloaking structures for the scattering problem at a fixed frequency. These new structures are, before using the transformation optics, layered structures and are designed so that their first scattering coefficients vanish. Inside the cloaking region, any target has near-zero scattering cross section for a band of frequencies. We analytically show that our new construction significantly enhances the cloaking effect for the Helmholtz equation.Comment: 16pages, 12 fugure

Modeling relaxation and jamming in granular media

We introduce a stochastic microscopic model to investigate the jamming and reorganization of grains induced by an object moving through a granular medium. The model reproduces the experimentally observed periodic sawtooth fluctuations in the jamming force and predicts the period and the power spectrum in terms of the controllable physical parameters. It also predicts that the avalanche sizes, defined as the number of displaced grains during a single advance of the object, follow a power-law, $P(s)\sim s^{-\tau}$, where the exponent is independent of the physical parameters

HER2-low and tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in triple-negative breast cancer:Are they connected?

Most patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) are not candidates for targeted therapy, leaving chemotherapy as the primary treatment option. Recently, immunotherapy has demonstrated promising results in TNBC, due to its immunogenicity. In addition, a novel antibody–drug conjugate, namely, trastuzumab-deruxtecan, has shown effectiveness in TNBC patients with low-HER2 expression (HER2-low). These novel treatment options raise the question about the potential association between the density of stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) and the level of HER2 expression. We aimed to evaluate the association between the level of HER2 expression (HER2-low versus HER2-0) and density of sTILs in TNBC patients, and how they impact the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). This was a retrospective multicenter study including all TNBC patients diagnosed between 2018 and 2022. Central pathology review included sTILs percentages and level of HER2 expression. Tumors were reclassified as either HER2-0 (HER2 IHC 0) or HER2-low (IHC 1 + or 2 + with negative reflex test). Various clinicopathologic characteristics, including sTILs density, and response to NAC were compared between HER2-0 and HER2-low cases. In total, 753 TNBC patients were included in this study, of which 292 patients received NAC. Interobserver agreement between the original pathology report and central review was moderate (77% had the same IHC status after reclassification in either HER2-0 or HER2-low; k = 0.45). HER2-low TNBC represented about one third (36%) of the tumors. No significant difference in sTILs density or complete pathologic response rate was found between HER2-0 and HER2-low cases (p = 0.476 and p = 0.339, respectively). The density of sTILs (≥ 10% sTILs vs. &lt; 10%) was independently associated with achieving a pCR (p = 0.011). In conclusion, no significant association was found between HER2-low status and density of sTILs nor response to NAC. Nonetheless, sTILs could be an independent biomarker for predicting NAC response in TNBC patients.</p