Explaining Tax Reform

Economic analysts generally have a more dispassionate attitude toward the subject. They are interested primarily in studying the effects of taxation on individual behavior and market prices, and in describing the distributional effects of tax policies. When the discussion turns to changes in the tax system, however, positive analysis may be replaced by advocacy of particular alternatives. This is illustrated by the frequent use of the word "reform" in the literature, a term usually employed to refer to changes designed to make the system better, where "better" is judged in relation to some ideal standard.Working Paper Number 04-48

The impace of custom ROM backups on android external storage erasure

The Android operating system is the current market leader on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. The core operating system is open source and has a number of developers creating variants of this operating system. These variants, often referred to as custom ROMs are available for a wide number of mobile devices. Custom ROMs provide a number of features, such as enhanced control over the operating system, variation in user interfaces and so on. The process of installing custom ROMs is often accomplished through the use of a ROM manager application. Such applications often provide mechanisms to back up the contents of the mobile device prior to upgrade. This mechanism is utilised in the case of a failed update to restore the device to its previous functional state. Backups produced in this manner are often stored in on an external media such as a micro-SD card.In the conducted research we evaluated devices inbuilt data erasure mechanisms within the context of erasure of backups produced by ROM managers. It was found that simply using the devices Format External / SD function is not an effective means of completely erasing these backups. Once recovered, these backups offer a quick source of information that a potential attacker could carve to retrieve user files such as media transferred to the external or from applications. Although the same files could be recovered from an image of the external storage itself, the carving process is more efficient than traditional carving methods

The Demands for Environmental Regulation and for Trade in the Presence of Private Mitigation

We study the nature of individual demands for environmental regulation and for trade openness in the general equilibrium of a small open economy where the environment is an input to production. Differences in the ability of individuals to afford private mitigation of the adverse consequences of pollution is a central feature of the analysis. Private mitigation leads to an endogenous, unequal distribution of the health-related consequences of pollution across income groups in a manner consistent with epidemiologic studies, in contrast to much of the literature which assumes equal health effects for all. We show that when private mitigation is possible at a cost, trade polarizes the interests of rich and poor with respect to the stringency of regulation. Moreover, even though trade has the potential to benefit everyone, the poor may oppose trade openness because of a concern that laxer environmental regulation will then be imposed in the interest of the rich. We explain why and how heterogeneity in the intensity of preferences, and not just in their direction, is likely to play a role in the determination of collective choices with respect to the regulation of the environment and of trade. We conclude by drawing out the general implications of the analysis for the study of the political economy of the environmenttrade- welfare nexus.regulation, environment, pollution, private mitigation, trade, welfare, collective choice

The Demands for Environmental Regulation and for Trade in the Presence of Private Mitigation

We study the nature of individual demands for environmental regulation and for trade openness in the general equilibrium of a small open economy where the environment is an input to production. Differences in the ability of individuals to afford private mitigation of the adverse consequences of pollution is a central feature of the analysis. Private mitigation leads to an endogenous, unequal distribution of the health-related consequences of pollution across income groups in a manner consistent with epidemiologic studies, in contrast to much of the literature which assumes equal health effects for all. We show that when private mitigation is possible at a cost, trade polarizes the interests of rich and poor with respect to the stringency of regulation. Moreover, even though trade has the potential to benefit everyone, the poor may oppose trade openness because of a concern that laxer environmental regulation will then be imposed in the interest of the rich. We explain why heterogeneity in the intensity of preferences, and not just in their direction, is likely to play a role in the determination of collective choices with respect to the regulation of the environment and of trade. We conclude by drawing out the implications of the analysis for the study of the political economy of the environment-trade-welfare nexus.regulation, environment, pollution, private mitigation, trade, welfare, health, collective choice

Investigations of lubricant rheology as applied to elastohydrodynamic lubrication

Measurements of lubricant shear rheological behavior in the amorphous solid region and near the liquid-solid transition are reported. Elastic, plastic and viscous behavior was observed. A shear rheological model based on primary laboratory data is proposed for concentrated contact lubrication. The model is a Maxwell model modified with a limiting shear stress. Three material properties are required: low shear stress viscosity, limiting elastic shear modulus, and the limiting shear stress the material can withstand. All three are functions of temperature and pressure. In applying the model to EHD contacts the predicted response possesses the characteristics expected from several experiments reported in the literature

Evolution of 4 pi observables in the Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck theory and the transverse momentum transfer as a barometer for hadronic matter

We study the dynamics of high energy heavy ion collisions through the Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck approach. Equilibration is observed, for central collisions. It is shown that the produced entropy, the pion multiplicity, flow angle, and transverse momentum distributions saturate at the moment of maximum compression and temperature. The effects of the nuclear equation of state and the Pauli principle are investigated. For the flow angle distribution there is a 20 deg reduction of the peak flow angle due to the Pauli principle. A stiff equation of state results in a 10–20 deg increase over the soft equation of state at all energies. The transverse momentum at projectile rapidity exhibits a peak structure as a function of impact parameter b. A 40% difference between soft and hard equation of state is observed for the peak impact parameter, i.e., for intermediate multiplicities

What do we Know about the Relationship between Regionalized Aspects of the Unemployment Insurance System and Internal Migration in Canada?

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the past four decades of empirical research on the relationship between internal migration and regional variation in the generosity of Canada’s unemployment insurance system. It has long been argued that because the Canadian insurance system is more generous towards people who live in relatively disadvantaged regions, it retards the out-migration that is part of the market process, thereby slowing economic development and contributing to the persistence of regional inequality in earned incomes. The survey shows, however, that there is no evidence in the empirical literature that regional variation in the generosity of the insurance system has altered internal migration patterns in Canada in a substantial manner.regional variation in unemployment insurance generosity, internal migration, interprovincial migration, earned income, comprehensive income differentials, index of insurance generosity, labour market attachment, conditional logit model

Political Competition and Convergence to Fundamentals: With Application to the Political Business Cycle and the Size of Government

We address the problem of how to investigate whether economics, or politics, or both, matter in the explanation of public policy. The problem is first posed in a particular context by uncovering a political business cycle (using Canadian data for 130 years) and by taking up the challenge to make this fact meaningful by finding a transmission mechanism through actual public choices. Since the cycle is in real growth, and it is reasonable to suppose that public expenditure would be involved, the central task then is to investigate the role of (partisan and opportunistic) political factors, as opposed to economic fundamentals, in the evolution of government size.We proceed by asking whether the data allow us to distinguish between the convergence and the nonconvergence hypotheses. Convergence means that political competition forces public spending to converge in the long run to a level dictated by endowments, tastes and technology. Nonconvergence is taken to mean that political factors other than the degree of political competition prevent convergence to that long run. The general idea here, one that may be applied in any situation where the key issue is the role of economics versus politics over time, is that an overtly political factor can be said to play a distinct role in the evolution of public choices if it can be shown to lead to departures from a dynamic path defined by the evolution of economic fundamentals in a competitive political system.public expenditure, size of government, long run versus short run, opportunism, partisanship, political competition, cointegration