On the Redistributive Properties of Presumptive Taxation

Presumptive taxation, in which an income proxy is used as tax base, has been and is still used today in countries with very diverse situations - developing, transition and developed countries. Usually, this form of taxation is thought of as a revenue-raising device in presence of widespread imperfect tax compliance. We investigate the question of whether presumptive taxation can be used as a redistributive instrument. To this end, we employ an occupational choice model in which an individual can be either an entrepreneur or a worker. We allow for different abilities to dodge taxes across social classes, and consider both the case in which a conventional income tax is in place alongside presumptive taxation and the case in which only presumptive taxation is operating. We argue that a revenue-neutral reform introducing a lump-sum presumptive tax based on occupational choice can improve social welfare, and sometimes even lead to a Pareto-improvement.tax avoidance, presumptive taxation, redistribution, occupational choice

Fiscal Federalism and Endogenous Lobbies' Formation

We study lobbying behavior by firms in a two-region economy, with either centralized or decentralized provision of profit-enhancing local public goods. Firms compete either in the market, lobbying for public good provision once entered in a market, or for the market, lobbying to gain ccess to it. When firms compete in the market, we show that lobbying is unambiguously less disruptive or social welfare under decentralization. Moreover, foreign rather than domestic private nterests may be more powerful in a.ecting regional policies. On the contrary, when firms compete or the market, lobbying is mostly e.ective under decentralization, since local firms always end p forming a local monopoly. However, we show that an institutional setting in which competencies re split between the center and the periphery may dominate either full centralization or full ecentralization or both.fiscal federalism, lobbying, private interests

Local Governments Tax Autonomy, Lobbying, and Welfare

What degree of tax autonomy should be granted to a regional government on a local tax base? Although the regional policy maker aims at maximizing social welfare, her tax policy may be distorted by the lobbying activity of local taxpayers. In this political environment we characterize the conditions under which social welfare can be increased by restricting the set of tax instruments available to the local policy maker, i.e. the degree of local tax autonomy. We show that full tax autonomy is likely to be dominated by minimal tax autonomy when there are many groups of similar size, while the converse occurs when tax bases are asymmetrically distributed.Tax autonomy, lobbying, local public good provision

Predicciones meteorológicas, pronosticadores, profetas y adivinadores

Fil: Galmarini, Alfredo. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Filosofía y Letra

Efecto de factores ambientales en la actividad de la abeja y en el rendimiento de semilla de cebolla (Allium cepa L.)

Los polinizadores son necesarios para producir semillas de cebolla. Esta especie es uno de los principales cultivos hortícolas. Dos tipos de variedades de cebolla se cultivan principalmente en todo el mundo: híbridos y cultivares de polinización abierta (PA). Aunque los híbridos ofrecen ventajas a los cultivadores de bulbos, los rendimientos de semillas de los híbridos son más bajos que los cultivares PA y eso es un problema importante. Se determinó la influencia de los factores ambientales (temperatura, radiación, precipitación, humedad relativa (HR) y velocidad del viento), así como la atracción de abejas y la producción de semillas en tres localidades, de principal zona productora de semillas de cebolla en Argentina. Se utilizaron nueve líneas androestériles (LAE) y una PA. Los resultados obtenidos mostraron una marcada variabilidad en la atracción de abejas y la producción de semillas entre la variedad PA y las LAE y dentro de las LAE. Además, los factores ambientales, como la temperatura mínima o HR, fueron determinantes para modificar el comportamiento de alimentación de las abejas, donde valores inferiores a 9°C y 22%, respectivamente, hicieron que las abejas detuvieran su actividad.Pollinators are required to produce onion seeds. This specie is one of the main vegetable crops. Two types of onion varieties are mainly grown worldwide: hybrids and open pollination (OP) cultivars. Although hybrids offer advantages to bulb growers, seed yields of hybrids are lower than OP cultivars and that is a significant problem. The influence of environmental factors (temperature, radiation, rainfall, relative humidity (RH) and wind speed) was determined,as well as bee attraction and seed production in three locations of the main onion seed production area in Argentina. Nine male sterile lines (MSL) and one OP were used. The results obtained showed a marked variability in the attraction of bees and seed production between the OP and MSL and within MLS. In addition, environmental factors such as minimun temperature or RH were determinant to modify bee foraging behavior, where values lower than 9°C and 22%, respectively, caused that bees stop their activity.Fil: Caselles, Cristian. Bayer Cropscience Sociedad Anonima; ArgentinaFil: Soto Vargas, Verónica Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Biología Agrícola de Mendoza. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Instituto de Biología Agrícola de Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Galmarini, Claudio Romulo. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias. Departamento de Producción Agropecuaria. Cátedra de Horticultura y Floricultura; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Voices of Teen Mothers: Their Challenges, Support Systems, and Successes

Teenage mothers are at a greater risk to drop out of school than their non-parenting classmates. The many and varied reasons for leaving school early are well documented. To examine why some at-risk students remain in school through graduation, this study will utilize three primary and accepted reasons why students drop out: school, personal and economic. Through qualitative analysis this study will examine why some high-risk teen mothers, faced with the challenges and opportunities of school, personal and economic services, manage to graduate from high school. The study design consists of five interviews with females who were pregnant or parenting as high school students. The narratives provide an insight into the challenges the young women encountered during pregnancy and childrearing at home and in school. The narratives also work as a framework for exploring the school, personal and economic factors that most influenced their ability to remain in school through graduation. Through a detailed qualitative analysis of the data, a quantitative matrix was designed to evaluate and score the impact level of school, personal and economic support. School-related support and personal support were found to be of near or equal importance to teen mothers actively working toward high school graduation. Economic support appeared least important of the three categories. The study also found that greater support from one category (i.e. school), could compensate for deficiencies in a separate category (i.e. personal). Furthermore, the study found across the board that success in terms of a teen mother graduating from high school hinged to some degree on a personal transformation within the teen mother, often spurred by dynamic leaders within the school or outside agencies that have regular contact with the teen mother. Further revealed was the significance of familial acceptance and support. The study makes apparent the need for further research of the dynamics of family in regard to nurturing success for a teen mother

Onion Cultivars Released by La Consulta Experiment Station, INTA, Argentina

The onion crop is of great importance in Argentina and, with garlic (Allium sativum L.), is the main fresh vegetable exported. The principal market for Argentine onions is Brazil, with significant exports to Europe and the United States. About 450,000 t of onions are produced yearly on 22,000 ha, for the freshmarket and dehydration industries (Galmarini, 1998). Onion seed production is also important in Argentina; ≈50,000 kg of seed is produced annually by domestic and international seed companies.EEA La ConsultaFil: Galmarini, Claudio Romulo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria La Consulta; Argentina

Mapping the distribution of Well-Being in Europe beyond national borders

Well-being is a concept difficult to define and eventually harder to quantify. The idea of providing descriptions and metrics to evaluate well-being goes back to Aristotle (1095 bc) and from there an increasingly large number of studies attempted to quantify well-being of individuals and societies. Well-being is generally perceived as a description of the state of human life which always captured the attention of sociologists, economists, psychologist, politicians and citizens, making it a largely debated interdisciplinary topic. In particular in recent times, characterized by even increasing concerns related to the economic and the environmental situation, an increasing attention has been devoted to determining integrated descriptions to include all the aspects of human life. In addition, a large attention, demonstrated by the increasing literature on the topic, has also been devoted to the contribution of politics and societal organization in the progress toward well-being. The first part of this report tries to review the existing literature on well-being. Two main broad wellbeing approaches will be considered, the subjective and the objective approaches. For every one of them, the main definitions, the most important theoretical perspectives and the most relevant metrics and quantifications will be reported. The major contribution is to provide a synthesis of the vast literature that exists on the concept of well-being. In addition, by presenting the most recent well-being approach based on the integration between the objective and the subjective ones, an overview of the future directions of well-being investigations is also provided.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat

Optimality and distortionary lobbying: control policies of cigarette consumption

We examine the optimal design of public policies directed at controlling the consumption of tobacco. The public authority uses two types of instruments: (i) an excise tax, that hinders consumption by increasing the price of cigarettes, and (ii) prevention and control programs, that reduce smoking by increasing consumers\u2019 awareness about future health harm. On the normative side, the analysis focuses on the optimal mix between the two types of instruments when the objective of the policy maker is to maximize social welfare. On the positive side, the paper investigates how the lobbying activities of the tobacco industry and of anti-tobacco organizations may distort government intervention

Presumptive Taxation, Markets, and Redistribution

In several Western countries, as well as in virtually all developing and transition ones, the government’s ability to redistribute income in favour of the less well-off is severely limited by the fact that certain groups of citizens can escape their tax obligations more easily than others. In this paper, we focus our attention on one of the possible responses to that problem, namely the recourse to presumptive taxation, whereby not income as such, but a proxy for income, is selected as the tax base. To study this issue, we employ an occupational choice model where an individual can either be a worker or an entrepreneur. We assume that a conventional income tax is in place and that only entrepreneurs, who are at the top of the income distribution, can partially avoid the income tax. In this setting, we show that presumptive taxation based either on occupational choice or on the firms’ input costs can raise the welfare of the workers, who are the poorest members of the society. This outcome is not necessarily achieved, however, by taxing entrepreneurs: in a number of circumstances, presumptive subsidies for the entrepreneurs are preferable to presumptive taxes, the reason being that the latter may cause production inefficiency as well as increase tax avoidance costs