Public health insurance and optimal income taxation

If individuals differ not only in their inherent capacity to earn income, but also in the probability that they will fall ill, can subsidized public health insurance be justified on the grounds that it serves as an efficient tool to redistribute welfare? This question is analyzed in a model where the social welfare function is a weighted average of individual expected utilities, and where taxation is by a linear income tax. The answer is ‘yes’, except in certain special cases.     

Taxpayers' responsiveness to tax rate changes and implications for the cost of taxation in Sweden

Historically, labor supply elasticities have been used to evaluate tax policy and predict tax revenue effects. They are likely to underestimate taxpayers' response to tax rate changes, and hence to underestimate changes in potential tax revenues, however, because they measure only how taxpayers alter hours worked. Taxpayers can also respond to tax rate changes by altering, for instance, their work effort and form of compensation. An alternative measure that accounts for these responses as well as hours worked is the elasticity of taxable income. This paper estimates the elasticity of earned taxable income for Swedish taxpayers using two different approaches and a number of control variables and the 1990/1991 tax reform as a “natural experiment”. The preferred elasticity estimates fall in the range of 0.4–0.5, comparable with recent estimates for the U.S. and larger than most of the labor supply elasticity estimates used to evaluate tax policy in Scandinavia previously, which suggests that deadweight losses are two to three times higher than previously thought. JEL Classification H21 · H24 · H31 · J22     

云南国家级自然保护区存在问题研究

云南是我国生物多样性丰富的地区,在生物多样性保护中扮演着重要角色;而云南国家级自然保护区在云南省自然保护区中又拥有较大比重,分布在云南生物多样性关键地区,对多种生态系统和大量动植物的保护起到了至关重要的作用。经过多年的努力,一些重要珍稀濒危动物种群数量有所增加。但这些保护区仍然存在一系列问题,主要包括三方面,一是客观因素,大多数保护区地处边远落后山区;二是来自于周边村寨巨大的人口压力;三是来自于当地政府和保护区,主要是缺乏长远规划、大力投资等问题。保护区资源受到如此多种因素的威胁,保护效果得不到充分发挥。只有采取强有力的保护措施,如加强社区共管、拓宽投资渠道、进行科学规划管理等,才能使保护区走上可持续发展的轨道。     

城镇建设适宜性评价的贝叶斯网络机器学习方法

研究目的：避免城镇建设适宜性评价指标及其权重体系建立的主观性,通过“数据海选—非线性认知—线性规则转化”的方式,探索能反映城镇建设适宜性影响因素之间真实联系、评价结果易于理解、便于落地实施的城镇建设适宜性评价方法。研究方法：非线性机器学习、贝叶斯网络模型。研究结果：贝叶斯网络非线性结构学习出的有向无圈网络（DAG）揭示了城镇建设适宜性评价指标影响的线性主次性,贝叶斯网络非线性参数学习出的各评价指标重要度映射出城镇建设适宜性评价指标的线性重要度。研究结论：对比“专家经验线性评价”、“非线性贝叶斯网络评价”“转化线性规则评价”三种方法评价结果,非线性贝叶斯网络评价结果的合理性大大高于专家经验线性评价结果,转化线性规则评价结果的准确性不如非线性贝叶斯网络评价,但误差在可接受范围内,评价出的城镇建设适宜用地更加集中连片,评价结果易于感知、理解,可行性强。     

森林认证与系统思想

森林认证是缓解全球森林退化、实现可持续发展战略的重要手段之一。它包括森林经营认证和森林产品认证。森林认证将影响到世界森林资源、各国林业发展以及生态、经济和社会。森林认证是一项复杂的系统工程,涉及国家政策和国民经济的方方面面。只有利用系统理论,才能更好分析论证在中国特定条件下的森林认证系统;在系统思想指导下,找出我国森林认证的关键要素、主要子系统和最优结构,才能发挥森林认证体系的最佳功能。     

Recreational Conflict Is Affective: The Case of Cross-Country Skiers and Snowmobiles

The authors conducted a field experiment to test the assumption that subjective feelings are important in recreation conflict. During a weekend, cross-country skiers in a popular recreation area were assigned randomly to an experimental group who were exposed to an operating snowmobile, and a control group who were not exposed. Both groups completed a self-report questionnaire to provide information on their subjective experiences during their outing. The experimental group answered the questions five to ten minutes after encountering a snowmobile. Participants were not informed about the connection between the snowmobile and the investigation, and the questions regarding effects were answered before any clues were given about snowmobiles being an issue. Results showed that relative to the control group, skiers who encountered a snowmobile had their affective quality significantly reduced. Moreover, encountering a single snowmobile had an effect on participants' beliefs about the extent to which noise from snowmobiles disturbed the quality of ski-touring in general.     

About FairTax

Intereconomics - Our research shows that in the ongoing discussion concerning ‘the social dimension of Europe’, it appears that there is much to gain if the tax policy interaction...     

Bending the rules,breaking the rules: How corruption and lobbying affect the investment market selection of Swedish firms

There is stark evidence that many policies which influence firm gains from engaging in FDI (such as tax and trade policies) are targeted by lobbying groups and that corruption can be an important determinant of market attractiveness. The scarce research that exists on firm behaviour, corruption and lobbying shows that these activities can be regarded as alternative, and interdependent, influence forms. This paper provides the novel contribution of investigating how the market infiltration of corruption and lobbying affects the firm's investment decision. We identify the interdependent effects using census data for Swedish manufacturing firms that allows a complete identification of the firm's market selection. Our results reveal that these private–public sector links influence the firm's investment decision differently, as market selection is deterred by corruption and stimulated by lobbying, and that they function as substitutes. We show that the stimulating lobbying effect largely can be attributed to its interdependency with corruption, which suggests that firms are more shielded from corruption in lobbying environments. Further investigation reveals that the corruption and lobbying effects are not always representative of larger firms: The largest firms are undeterred by corruption in markets where lobbying forms an integral part of the business environment and larger firms are not stimulated by lobbying in markets largely void of corruption.     

我国上市公司可转换债券发行的财富效应研究

本文运用事件研究方法对可转换债券的发行是否具有财富效应进行了实证分析,结果表明我国上市公司可转换债券的发行不具有明显的财富效应。这一结果与国外的多数相关研究有较大差别,本文对此进行了探讨。