Risk Management for Targeting Customs Controls in Developing Countries: A Risky Venture for Revenue Performance?

Customs authorities in developing countries are often reluctant to forgo systematic inspections for fear of risking revenue loss. Such physical inspections, however, impede rather than facilitate trade. Control selectivity is therefore a key issue in customs administration reform. This paper shows how a sophisticated risk management method can facilitate trade by automatically and rationally selecting transactions, with the end result of actually enhancing revenue performance.trade facilitation, fiscal revenues, risk management, moral hazard, customs controls

GENDER, PENSIONS AND INCOME IN RETIREMENT. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 87 SEPTEMBER 2019

This report examines key dimensions of the policy debate around gender and pensions in Ireland, namely the gender pension gap, income poverty, and financial decision-making. The research summarises three studies carried out as part of a programme of research at the Economic and Social Research institute (ESRI) funded by the Pensions Council. Women may face a number of potential issues both before and during retirement that can have a cumulative impact resulting in significantly lower financial security in retirement than men. In retirement, pension income accounts for most of the income of men and women in Ireland (Central Statistics Office (CSO), 2013). A woman aged 65–79 in the EU-28 received a pension that was on average 38 per cent lower than her male counterpart in 2016; the corresponding figure for Ireland was 26 per cent (European Commission, 2018). Overall, the older population has fared better than other age groups in terms of the experience of income poverty in Ireland in recent years. However, there remains a proportion (currently just under 9 per cent) who live in income poverty (CSO, 2018), despite the fact that the level of older age state benefits should be sufficient to keep this group out of income poverty. Demographic trends mean that older women, who live longer than men, will make up a larger share of the population, and will be increasingly likely to live alone (European Commission, 2018). This means that older women will need to assume greater responsibility for their own financial security in older age. For any policy to tackle successfully gender differences in economic outcomes in older age, it is also important to understand how men and women may differ in terms of financial decision-making. Decisions about many aspects of economic life are shaped by attitudes to risk, time preferences and financial literacy skills, and there is evidence that men and women differ in some aspects of these key dimensions of decision making

Forest influence on the surface water chemistry of granitic basins receiving acid precipitation in the Vosges massif, France

This study shows the influence of acid rain on the chemistry of surface waters in two small basins. The basins present similar altitudes and climates, only one is forested, and the forest decline has been clearly established. In both basins, rain water is polluted by acids (H+, so24-,N03). This acid input is neutralized in soils but the efficiency of that neutralization varies from one basin to another: (a) in the non forested basin, the alkalinity of surface water dominates the anionic charge, (b) in the forested basin, the strong acid anions still dominate the anionic charge of a just neutralized solution. The chemistry of surface water in the forested basin cannot be explained only by the incident rainfall and its partial evaporation. There appears to be a major input of pollutant through dry deposits in throughfall

Derivative-based global sensitivity measures: general links with Sobol' indices and numerical tests

The estimation of variance-based importance measures (called Sobol' indices) of the input variables of a numerical model can require a large number of model evaluations. It turns to be unacceptable for high-dimensional model involving a large number of input variables (typically more than ten). Recently, Sobol and Kucherenko have proposed the Derivative-based Global Sensitivity Measures (DGSM), defined as the integral of the squared derivatives of the model output, showing that it can help to solve the problem of dimensionality in some cases. We provide a general inequality link between DGSM and total Sobol' indices for input variables belonging to the class of Boltzmann probability measures, thus extending the previous results of Sobol and Kucherenko for uniform and normal measures. The special case of log-concave measures is also described. This link provides a DGSM-based maximal bound for the total Sobol indices. Numerical tests show the performance of the bound and its usefulness in practice

Refugees’ trajectories in Switzerland: Impact of residence permits on labour market integration

Life course trajectories of refugee populations in European countries highly depend on the various statuses and residence permits that are assigned to them. Taking the case study of Switzerland, this article aims at showing the impact of the legal framework on refugees’ chances of labour market integration. The term «refugee» here refers to all the individuals who came to Switzerland seeking asylum, no matter the outcome of the asylum procedure – and not only to those who obtained the status as defined by the 1951 Geneva Convention. In this study, the longitudinal follow‐up of the individuals is made possible by the matching of data from several population registers. From a descriptive point of view, sequence analysis allows the visualization of refugees’ trajectories from their arrival in the country – in terms of both residence permits and of labour market participation. Survival analysis models then show the concordance between the administrative status and the economic status, the access to more stable permits increasing significantly the chances of labour market integration. As a consequence, those who remain for many years with the most precarious permits (asylum seekers and provisionally admitted persons) go through a process of cumulative disadvantage. Although the economic vulnerability of refugees has been highlighted previously, this paper shows that within the refugee population, the host countries’ legislation creates an additional hierarchy, based on the residence permits, that further widens inequalities

Qui sont-ils ?

Combien sont-ils ? Quel âge ont-ils ? Que lisent-ils ? En s’appuyant sur des études, des enquêtes et sur les observations des praticiens, Anne-Marie Bertrand brosse le portrait-robot de l’usager en BU, BM et BDP de ce début de siècle : un public en mutation avec une demande issue de nouvelles pratiques culturelles