SWEtaxben: A Swedish Tax/Benefit Micro Simulation Model and an Evaluation of a Swedish Tax Reform

The purpose of SWEtaxben is to evaluate the impact of changes in the tax/benefit systems on households as well as the central governmental budget. Relating to the micro simulation literature this model can be labeled a static micro simulation model with behavioral changes. This behavioral change takes two different forms and use two different types of models; first binary models that describe mobility in/out from non-work states such as old age pension, disability, unemployment, long term sickness and second models that describe change in working hours and welfare participation. Thus, apart from the choice to work or not to work, working hours conditional on working as well as welfare participation are treated as endogenous variables. As an application the model is used to evaluate the recent Swedish "make work pay" reform, effective from 2007 and further reinforced in 2008 and 2009. The key characteristic of this reform is an in-work tax credit and decreased state tax rate. Simulations performed by SWEtaxben show increased working hours at both the intensive as well as extensive margin. The tax decrease together with dynamic changes results in a strong increase in household's incomes but also a reduction in income inequality. However, even considering the increase in hours of work, the reform is far from being self-financed.micro simulation, tax-benefit system, in-work tax credit reform

Wages and Immigrant Occupational Composition in Sweden

This paper examines the relationship between immigrant occupational composition and wages in Sweden. Effects of changes in proportion of immigrant workers in different occupations on the wage levels of both natives and immigrants are estimated. Our results suggest that increases in immigrant density have only small effects on wages and that the negative relationship between wages and the proportion of immigrant workers in an occupation, observed in data, is almost entirely accounted for by measured and unmeasured worker skills. These results suggest that wage differences across occupations with different densities of immigrants are mainly due to quality sorting and to a lesser extent due to the existence of discrimination.immigrants, refugees, occupational composition, quality sorting, wages

Centaurus A at Ultra-High Energies

We review the importance of Centaurus A in high energy astrophysics as a nearby object with many of the properties expected of a major source of very high energy cosmic rays and gamma-rays. We examine observational techniques and the results so far obtained in the energy range from 200 GeV to above 100 EeV and attempt to fit those data with expectations of Centaurus A as an astrophysical source from VHE to UHE energies.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

An updated checklist of the European Butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea)

This paper presents an updated checklist of the butterflies of Europe, together with their original name combinations, and their occurrence status in each European country. According to this checklist, 496 species of the superfamily Papilionoidea occur in Europe. Changes in comparison with the last version (2.6.2) of Fauna Europaea are discussed. Compared to that version, 16 species are new additions, either due to cryptic species most of which have been discovered by molecular methods (13 cases) or due to discoveries of Asian species on the eastern border of the European territory in the Ural mountains (three cases). On the other hand, nine species had to be removed from the list, because they either do not occur in Europe or lost their species status due to new evidence. In addition, three species names had to be changed and 30 species changed their combination due to new evidence on phylogenetic relationships. Furthermore, minor corrections were applied to some authors¿ names and years of publication. Finally, the name Polyommatus ottomanus Lefèbvre, 1831, which is threatened by its senior synonym Lycaena legeri Freyer, 1830, is declared a nomen protectum, thereby conserving its name in the current combination Lycaena ottomana.VL was supported by grant N 14-14-00541 from the Russian Science Foundation to the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and ZF by grant 14- 36098G from the Czech Science Foundation

Conserved ancestral tropical niche but different continental histories explain the latitudinal diversity gradient in brush-footed butterflies.

The global increase in species richness toward the tropics across continents and taxonomic groups, referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient, stimulated the formulation of many hypotheses to explain the underlying mechanisms of this pattern. We evaluate several of these hypotheses to explain spatial diversity patterns in a butterfly family, the Nymphalidae, by assessing the contributions of speciation, extinction, and dispersal, and also the extent to which these processes differ among regions at the same latitude. We generate a time-calibrated phylogeny containing 2,866 nymphalid species (~45% of extant diversity). Neither speciation nor extinction rate variations consistently explain the latitudinal diversity gradient among regions because temporal diversification dynamics differ greatly across longitude. The Neotropical diversity results from low extinction rates, not high speciation rates, and biotic interchanges with other regions are rare. Southeast Asia is also characterized by a low speciation rate but, unlike the Neotropics, is the main source of dispersal events through time. Our results suggest that global climate change throughout the Cenozoic, combined with tropical niche conservatism, played a major role in generating the modern latitudinal diversity gradient of nymphalid butterflies

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO