Welfare dominance and the design of excise taxation in Cote d'Ivoire

Governments in developing countries are continuously searching for new and improved tax bases. Existing methods of taxation in these countries frequently fall short of meeting acceptable criteria of efficiency, equity and administrative ease. This paper argues that there is a compelling fiscal rationale for encouraging greater reliance on taxing the consumption of electrical and telephone (ET) services. Greater emphasis on this selective commodity tax base would contribute to the achievement of taxpayer equity and would be administratively easy to impose. In addition, the efficiency characteristics of this form of taxation may also add to the attractiveness of the ET base.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Inequality

Tax reform in Malawi

This paper examines Malawi's recent efforts to reform its tax system. Malawi embarked on a comprehensive tax reform with World Bank assistance in the latter half of the 1980s. This paper concentrates on the problems in the revenue system that provided the impetus to reform, the nature of the solutions that were offered, and the issues raised in implementing the reforms. Since many of these reforms are still being introduced into Malawi's economy, their ultimate success will have to await future analysis. This paper gives an overview of Malawi's economy and tax system and discusses its evolution up to the time of the Bank's involvement in the mid-1980s. The reform agenda is outlined and the implementation of that agenda to date is discussed. The paper concludes with a brief set of lessons that can be learned from the Malawi experience.Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management

Popular Consumption and the Mass Market in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

The author discusses new approaches arising out of the recent recognition of a lively con-sumer market in existence in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, serving more than just the aristocracy and gentry. It reached down to farmers, craftsmen, merchants and small traders living all over England. She empha-sizes the great variety of cheap consumer goods available, and the many different qualities, with the result that prices brought some of them within the purses of humble people. Demand stimulated the use of ma-chines but because machine-made goods were not always superior, hand and machine manufacture coexisted. Changing fashion constantly threatened the survival of local industries, but in the seventeenth century they seem to have survived more successfully than in the sixteenth century by finding new markets overseas. Chapmen and pedlars promoted vigorous sales at home, but the geography of the best served areas needs to be explained. An atlas of rural districts with and without resident gentry and better knowledge of the social structure of different towns might help to explain why consumer goods reached some areas and not others and how mass con-sumption differed from that of the nineteenth century. Résumé L'auteur montre les nouvelles perspectives qu'offre la reconnaissance récente d'un marché de consommation très actif dont l'existence, du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, reposait sur une clientèle qui s'étendait bien au delà des gens de haute et de petite noblesse. Ce marché desservait les paysans, artisans, marchands et petits commerçants de toutes les parties du royaume. L'auteur souligne la grande variété des biens de consommation bon marché alors disponibles, de même que les nombreux niveaux de qualité, qui permet-taient de vendre certains articles à des prix abordables pour les petites gens. La demande stimulait la production mécanisée mais, comme ce qui était fait à la machine n 'était pas toujours supérieur, des produits fabriqués à la main coexistaient avec ceux fabriqués à la machine. L'évolution de la mode était une menace constante à la survie des industries locales, mais il semble que celles-ci aient réussi à survivre davantage au XVIIe siècle qu 'au XVIe, en trouvant de nouveaux débouchés outremer. Colporteurs et vendeurs itinérants activaient les ventes à domicile, mais la géographie des régions les mieux desservies appelle certaines explications. Un atlas des localités rurales dont la population perma-nente comprenait ou ne comprenait pas de notables et une meilleure connaissance de la structure sociale de diverses villes contri-bueraient peut-être à expliquer pourquoi les biens de consommation atteignaient certaines régions et pas d'autres, et comment la consom-mation de masse différait de ce qu'elle allait devenir au XIXe siècle

Lessons from tax reform : an overview

The World Bank's tax reform project is an attempt to document and analyze the experience with tax reform in ten developing countries. The purpose of this project has been to try and obtain a better appreciation of how developing countries may improve the performance of their tax systems. Towards this end, each country study has delved into the questions of what motivated these tax reforms, what they were intended to accomplish, how they were implemented and how successful they have been in achieving their objectives. This paper attempts to discern empirical regularities to see whether there are some general lessons that can be extracted from a comparison of the experience with tax reform in different countries. The countries encompassed by this project are Turkey, Indonesia, Korea, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Morocco, Malawi and Zimbabwe.Taxation&Subsidies,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform

Agricultural Policy and Income Distribution in Colombia

Paper by Wayne R. Thirs

Stereoselective routes to the total synthesis of the polyene macrolide viridenomycin

Viridenomycin 11 is a polyene macrolide possessing a wealth of biological activity. As part of an ongoing program examining the stereoselective synthesis of polyene natural products, a strategy was explored to effect the total synthesis of viridenomycin 11.As a consequence of the adopted retrosynthetic strategy, the project was naturally divided into three main areas: efforts directed towards the southern (E, E, E, Z)-tetraene 210, towards the northern (E, Z, Z)-triene 209, and towards the core cyclopentenone 211.Both polyenic sections 209 and 210 were tackled with a view to utilizing palladium-coupling methodology developed in the group, whereby vinylboronates of type 122 undergo Heck coupling with alkenyl halides, affording polyenyl boronates that may then be converted into polyenyl iodides via stereoselective iodo-deboronation. The geometry of the new double bond is determined by the order of reagent addition during the iodo-deboronation. Vinylboronates such as 122 may thus be regarded as a vinyl dianion equivalent, permitting ready access to either alkene geometry, and allowing a polyene chain to be built up via an iterative process. Efforts towards 209 gave rise to a surprising reaction, in which it was discovered that iodoacrylates 214 are problematic Heck coupling partners due to a propensity to undergo novel Michael addition-elimination reactions with most amine bases, instead affording amino acrylates in excellent yields.Efforts towards 210 called for the development of new and robust methods for the elaboration of the amino acid phenylglycine, providing gready improved procedures for its conversion to the corresponding N-protected β-amino alcohol, N-protected β-amino-O-sulfonylates, N -protected β -amino iodides and N-protected β-amino nitriles, all valuable synthetic intermediates in their own right. An advanced synthon en route to 210 was prepared by Heck coupling of (Z)-iodide 214 with vinylboronate 272, representing a considerable in-road into the synthesis of this fragment. Markedly different chemistry was required to synthesize 211. Its retrosynthetic strategy called for a stereoselective aldol reaction, and as a consequence of this work it was found that novel oxazaborolidinone mediated Mukaiyama aldol additions between diene 4-(ferr-butoxy)-2,4-bis[(trimethylsilyl)oxy]-l,3-butadienyl methyl ether 335 and a wide range of electrophiles gave aldol products in isolated yields of up to 90%

The Role of Energy Quality in Shaping Long-Term Energy Intensity in Europe

On the European aggregate level there is an inverted-U curve for long-term energy intensity. In the 19th century aggregate European energy intensity rose, followed by a declining trend during the 20th century. This article discusses the possible explanations for the declining trend during the 20th century and explores the role of energy quality as expressed in energy prices. For the first time a complete set of national energy retail prices covering two centuries has been constructed and used for Britain, while the energy price data previously available for Sweden until 2000 has been updated to 2009. This allows us to explore the role of energy quality in shaping long-term energy intensity. We find no relation between energy quality and energy intensity in the 19th century, while energy quality may have stimulated the declining energy intensity in Europe over the 20th century, but is not the sole or even main reason for the decline. Rather, increased economic efficiency in the use of energy services seems to have been the main driver for the decline after 1970, presumably driven by the information and communication technology

Vocal Clarity Through Drama Strategy

AbstractTheatre based voice training techniques have been associated with actors and singers mostly. However, they can also help benefit second language learners. This paper aims to describe theatre based voice training techniques and investigates the effect of these techniques on learners’ vocal skills. Following three theatre based voice training sessions, Turkish learners of L2 English (N=40) were found to score higher in the oral prosody scale (Zutell and Rasisnki, 1991) compared to the pre-test. It is concluded that contributing to freedom in the voice and reducing inhibitions of the learner and enabling the learner to experiment with the prosodic aspects of the target language, theatre based voice training activities can be employed in language teaching