Growth and public infrastructure

The paper analyzes a multicountry extension of the Barro model of productive public expenditure. In the presence of positive infrastructural externalities between countries, the provision of infrastructure will be inefficiently low if countries do not coordinate. This provides a role for a supranational body, such as the European Union, to coordinate the policies of the individual governments. It is shown how intervention by a supranational body can raise welfare by internalizing the infrastructural externality. Infrastructural externalities increase the importance of tax policy in the growth process and distribute the benefits of taxation across countries

Opiate of Christ; or, John's Gospel and the Spectre of Class

This article applies a Libertarian Marxist lens to the Gospel of John. In doing so, it highlights the agrarian-aristocratic class struggle that is refracted in the text and also seeks to problematize hierarchi- cal and authoritarian ideologies. Its point of departure is the recent political interpretations of John championed by Tom Thatcher (2009) and Warren Carter (2008), but it diverges significantly from these readings by observing how the gospel’s so-called “subversive” qual- ity has often been overstated and/or simply taken for granted. By focusing on the problematic re-inscription of hierarchies of power, the reading advanced below argues that John’s heightening of impe- rial ideology in Jesus is at best unsubversive and at worst normal- izing of a fascist-like impulse for racial and authoritarian purity

More damn lies about data access

More data than we can handle is no excuse to give up our efforts to promote data access, but it may make us think about new ways to make it sustainable.
[This draft was written in the hope that participants of the Sage Congress will write an Nature Genetics Editorial in the manner of Tom Sawyer’s white fence (Twain M. 1876). All contributions received by April 10th 2011 will be attributed.]
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Winston Peters “Puts His Hand to the Plow”: The Bible in New Zealand Political Discourse

This article examines the charismatic New Zealand politician Winston Peters’ sparse use of the Bible as a case study in the propagation of the “Cultural” and “Liberal” Bibles across the relatively irreligious landscape of New Zealand’s political landscape. It considers why politicians continue to employ biblical rhetoric despite increasing indifference towards Christianity and the Bible, by situating such moves within the context of global capitalism. It also identifies some peculiarities of the political use of the Bible unique to the New Zealand situation and explores how these have aided the construction of distinctive political identities

Does charity begin and end at home for tax exemptions?

Charitable organisations have remained exempt from income tax in Australia since the first comprehensive state income tax legislation in 18841 through to the current Income Tax Assessment Act 1977. The charitable exemption was also part of the English income tax legislation from its inception in 1799. The Federal Treasurer has released exposure draft legislation which seeks to remove taxation exemptions from some tax exempt organisations that perform any of their activities outside Australia or make trust distributions overseas. The proposed legislation is in response to alleged tax avoidance arrangements which involve tax exempt organisations and charitable trusts. The paper begins by describing the current charity tax exemption provisions under the Income Tax Assessment Act (ITAA). It then turns to tracing the background policy history of the amendments which appear to be at odds with the form and intent of the proposed provisions. The proposed amendments and their practical consequences are then closely scrutinised and found wanting in a number of respects. Alternative strategies are suggested to arrive at an equitable solution to the avoidance mischief

Social work practice and competing philosophies

Summary: Social work practice has often been subject to trends, something that could arguably be the case now. Postmodernism is on a march that threatens the long-standing modernist perspective on which social work has traditionally been practiced. However, postmodernism has important lessons to teach and may correctly be observed as an alternative practice approach with distinct theories and methods of application. Findings: The social work profession is under threat from creeping managerialism, bureaucracy and internally competing philosophies. Postmodernist perspectives have much to offer practitioners and the recipients of social work, but may be stifled because organisational structures, including academia, will have to embrace new practice methods in order for postmodernism to achieve widespread legitimacy. Traditional, modern social work practice with its empirically based frameworks and theories remains in the ascendancy for now

Thermodynamic properties of solid palladium-silver alloys and other alloys are investigated by torsion-effusion technique

Vapor pressure data obtained by the torsion-effusion method provides the thermodynamic properties of several transition-metal alloy systems. The vapor pressure of silver over solid silver and over palladium-silver alloys was measured and the results were more accurate than those found previously by other techniques

Taxation and international oligopoly

The combined use of specific and ad valorem taxation as a policy response to the welfare losses caused by international oligopoly is explored. With Nash competition between countries, taxation is inferior to quantity control. In contrast, when countries cooperate production control and taxation lead to identical outcomes. If a single country regulates the oligopoly, taxation can strictly dominate production control.oligopoly

Taxation and economic growth

The development of endogenous growth theory has opened an avenue through which the effects of taxation on economic growth can be explored. Explicit modelling of the individual decisions that contribute to growth allows the analysis of tax incidence and the prediction of growth effects. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical evidence to assess whether a consensus arises as to how taxation affects the rate of economic growth. It is shown that the theoretical models isolate a number of channels through which taxation can affect growth and that these effects may be very substantial. Although empirical tests of the growth effect face unresolved difficulties, the empirical evidence points very strongly to the conclusion that the tax effect is very weak.

Mixed oligopoly, subsidization and the order of firms' moves: an irrelevance result for the general case

It is proved that the irrelevance result of Poyago-Theotoky can be extended from the linear-quadratic case to general inverse demand and cost functions. Hence, as long as firms are profitable at the first-best, the optimal subsidy decentralizes it in mixed oligopoly irrespecitve of whether the public firm maximizes welfare or profit and moves simultaneously with private firms, or maximizes welfare and acts as a Stackelberg leader.first-best