Fiscal Incidence When Both Individual Welfare and Family Structure Matter: The Case of Subsidization of Home -care for the Elderly

Demographic ageing in Western countries has increased the pressure on children of elderly parents to provide care privately as an alternative to more costly institutionalization, and this pressure is likely to intensify. While some papers have recently investigated the optimal structure of family policy in this context, there is little work so far on the distributional impact of programs whose purpose is to subsidize the care of seniors who remain at home. We investigate analytically and with simulation the measureme nt of the fiscal incidence of programs that subsidize home care for the elderly, when both individual welfare and family structure matter. The definition of welfare incidence, the comparison of welfare-based incidence with budgetary incidence for non-cooperative and cooperative families, and the calculation of the shifting of program benefits between family members, some of whom may be altruistic, are key issues in the analysis. The integration of individual welfare, family structure and benefit shifting provides a new perspective on the study of the distributional consequences of home-care programs.home care subsidy, fiscal incidence, family structure, altruism, shifting

Density of states of a graphene in the presence of strong point defects

The density of states near zero energy in a graphene due to strong point defects with random positions are computed. Instead of focusing on density of states directly, we analyze eigenfunctions of inverse T-matrix in the unitary limit. Based on numerical simulations, we find that the squared magnitudes of eigenfunctions for the inverse T-matrix show random-walk behavior on defect positions. As a result, squared magnitudes of eigenfunctions have equal {\it a priori} probabilities, which further implies that the density of states is characterized by the well-known Thomas-Porter type distribution. The numerical findings of Thomas-Porter type distribution is further derived in the saddle-point limit of the corresponding replica field theory of inverse T-matrix. Furthermore, the influences of the Thomas-Porter distribution on magnetic and transport properties of a graphene, due to its divergence near zero energy, are also examined.Comment: 6 figure

Studies of Efficiency of the LHCb Muon Detector Using Cosmic Rays

We study the efficiency of the muon detector using the cosmic ray events collected in the summer and autumn 2008. We find that the efficiencies in all stations are consistent with 100% for cosmic tracks coming from the LHCb interaction point, without any restriction on time. We calculate the efficiencies also per station and region and per station and quadrant, finding consistent results

Extension of the Representative Elementary Watershed approach for cold regions: constitutive relationships and an application

International audienceThe Representative Elementary Watershed (REW) approach proposed by Reggiani et al. (1998, 1999) represents an attempt to develop a scale adaptable modeling framework for the hydrological research community. Tian et al. (2006) extended the original REW theory for cold regions through explicit treatment of energy balance equations to incorporate associated cold regions processes, such as snow and glacier melting/accumulation, and soil freezing/thawing. However, constitutive relationships for the cold regions processes needed to complete these new balance equations have been left unspecified in this derivation. In this paper we propose a set of closure schemes for cold regions processes within the extended framework. An energy balance method is proposed to close the balance equations of melting/accumulation processes as well as the widely-used and conceptual degree-day method, whereas the closure schemes for soil freezing and thawing are based on the maximum unfrozen-water content model. The proposed closure schemes are coupled to the previously derived balance equations and implemented within the Thermodynamic Watershed Hydrological Model (THModel, Tian, 2006) and then applied to the headwaters of the Urumqi River in Western China. The results of the 5-year calibration and 3-year validation analyses show that THModel can indeed simulate runoff processes in this glacier and snow-dominated catchment reasonably well, which shows the prospects of the REW approach and the developed closure schemes for cold regions processes