199,318 research outputs found
The economics of a temporary VAT cut
Get PDF1. The rate of VAT has been cut temporarily to 15%, with a return to 17.5% in place for the end of 2009. The government has predicted that this will increase consumer spending by about 0.5%. Much of the analysis of this tax cut has been critical of the policy and concluded that the government's estimates of the impact on spending are over-optimistic. The source of this criticism is a misunderstanding of the mechanism through which the tax cut will have an impact. In fact, we believe the government's estimates are overly-pessimistic.
2. There are two mechanisms through which the temporary VAT cut might affect spending:
first, it will increase spending power, making households feel as if they have more income. This mechanism is likely to be small partly because the tax cut increases income only for one year, and so the increase in total lifetime resources is very small, and partly because the lost revenue will have to be paid back.
3. However, the second (often ignored) mechanism is likely to be much more important. This second mechanism is the effect that the tax cut will have through changing the price of goods bought in 2009 compared to 2010: the cost of goods bought in 2009 has fallen compared to goods bought in 2010 and this change in prices gives an incentive to bring forward consumer spending to this year, rather than waiting until next.
4. Economic evidence on households' willingness to move spending from one year into an earlier (or later) year suggests that a 1% fall in the price today will translate into a 1% increase in spending. Since roughly only half of goods purchased are subject to VAT, the cut in the rate by 2.5% is like a cut in prices today by 1.25% and we would expect this to boost spending by about 1.25% over what it would otherwise be.
5. Of course, this issue of what the spending would otherwise be is crucial: we will not now know what spending in 2009 would have been without the cut in VAT and even with the VAT cut, spending is likely to decline. Our point is simply that economic analysis shows that the cut in VAT will make the situation significantly less bad than it might otherwise have been.
6. A natural comparison to the fiscal stimulus of a cut in VAT is a monetary stimulus through a cut in the interest rate: both make the price of spending today low compared to next year - an interest rate cut makes saving less attractive than current spending, as does the cut in VAT. The 1.25% fall in prices due to the cut in VAT reduces the price of spending today by more than a 1% point cut in the interest rate. It is surprising that some commentators have labeled the former as "small", while the latter would typically be considered a large cut.
7. There is however a difference between cutting interest rates and cutting VAT: a cut in interest rates penalises savers, whose spending power falls, and rewards borrowers. By contrast, the cut in VAT increases the spending power of savers (as well as borrowers) and this seems a fairer way to stimulate the economy
Male Adolescence in Mid-Victorian Fiction: George Meredith, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope
No full textFocusing on works by George Meredith, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope, Alice Crossley examines the emergence of adolescence in the mid-Victorian period as a distinct form of experience. Adolescence, Crossley shows, appears as a discrete category of identity that draws on but is nonetheless distinguishable from other masculine types. Important more as a stage of psychological awareness and maturation than as a period of biological youth, Crossley argues that the plasticity of male adolescence provides Meredith, Thackeray, and Trollope with opportunities for self-reflection and social criticism while also working as a paradigm for narrative and imaginative inquiry about motivation, egotism, emotional and physical relationships, and the possibilities of self-creation. Adolescence emerges as a crucial stage of individual growth, adopted by these authors in order to reflect more fully on cultural and personal anxieties about manliness. The centrality of male youth in these authors’ novels, Crossley demonstrates, repositions age-consciousness as an integral part of nineteenth-century debates about masculine heterogeneity.Contents: 1 Introduction. 2 The Bildungsroman and Advertising: Thackeray's Pendennis Novels. 3 Manly Conduct: Meredith and the Culture of Improvement. 4 Investments in Youth: Speculation and Liberal Adolescence in Trollope. 5 The Language of Filial Dialogue in Meredith. 6 Aberrant Youth: The Dandy, the Wild Man, and the Deviant. Conclusion.</p
Male Adolescence in Mid-Victorian Fiction: George Meredith, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope
No full textFocusing on works by George Meredith, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope, Alice Crossley examines the emergence of adolescence in the mid-Victorian period as a distinct form of experience. Adolescence, Crossley shows, appears as a discrete category of identity that draws on but is nonetheless distinguishable from other masculine types. Important more as a stage of psychological awareness and maturation than as a period of biological youth, Crossley argues that the plasticity of male adolescence provides Meredith, Thackeray, and Trollope with opportunities for self-reflection and social criticism while also working as a paradigm for narrative and imaginative inquiry about motivation, egotism, emotional and physical relationships, and the possibilities of self-creation. Adolescence emerges as a crucial stage of individual growth, adopted by these authors in order to reflect more fully on cultural and personal anxieties about manliness. The centrality of male youth in these authors’ novels, Crossley demonstrates, repositions age-consciousness as an integral part of nineteenth-century debates about masculine heterogeneity.Contents: 1 Introduction. 2 The Bildungsroman and Advertising: Thackeray's Pendennis Novels. 3 Manly Conduct: Meredith and the Culture of Improvement. 4 Investments in Youth: Speculation and Liberal Adolescence in Trollope. 5 The Language of Filial Dialogue in Meredith. 6 Aberrant Youth: The Dandy, the Wild Man, and the Deviant. Conclusion.</p
Cheladonta crossi Lipovsky, Crossley and Loomis 1955
No full textCheladonta crossi Lipovsky, Crossley and Loomis, 1955: NEAPublished as part of Nielsen, David H., Robbins, Richard G. & Rueda, Leopoldo M., 2021, Annotated world checklist of the Trombiculidae and Leeuwenhoekiidae (1758 - 2021) (Acari: Trombiculoidea), with notes on nomenclature, taxonomy, and distribution, pp. 1-243 in Zootaxa 4967 (1) on page 47, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4967.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/474551
Cheladonta micheneri Lipovsky, Crossley and Loomis 1955
No full textCheladonta micheneri Lipovsky, Crossley and Loomis, 1955: NEAPublished as part of Nielsen, David H., Robbins, Richard G. & Rueda, Leopoldo M., 2021, Annotated world checklist of the Trombiculidae and Leeuwenhoekiidae (1758 - 2021) (Acari: Trombiculoidea), with notes on nomenclature, taxonomy, and distribution, pp. 1-243 in Zootaxa 4967 (1) on page 47, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4967.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/474551
Cheladonta ouachitensis Lipovsky, Crossley and Loomis 1955
No full textCheladonta ouachitensis Lipovsky, Crossley and Loomis, 1955: NEAPublished as part of Nielsen, David H., Robbins, Richard G. & Rueda, Leopoldo M., 2021, Annotated world checklist of the Trombiculidae and Leeuwenhoekiidae (1758 - 2021) (Acari: Trombiculoidea), with notes on nomenclature, taxonomy, and distribution, pp. 1-243 in Zootaxa 4967 (1) on page 47, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4967.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/474551
New sampling technique for collection of nanoparticles from liquids
No full textTransmission electron microscopy (TEM) is the only technique which can give accurate information on the individual size, shape and composition of NPs. However, in dilute forms it is difficult to collect a sufficient number of NPs on an electron microscope grid for TEM analysis without some means of concentrating the dispersion of NPs. This study introduces a novel TEM sampling technique which overcomes this shortcoming and allows for both the natural and engineered NPs in dilute dispersions as found in waste and contaminated waters to be selectively sampled, based on their electrical charge. The technique is based on the use of carefully functionalized collector surfaces built by using the layer-by-layer assembly of polyelectrolytes on TEM grids. The layers are electrically charged and the top layer will attract and retain oppositely charged sampled NPs from aqueous solutions. The ability of the collector to attract both single particles and particle aggregates on the top polyelectrolyte layer collected from dilute aqueous dispersions after a short sampling time is demonstrated from the TEM images. The nature of the particles attracted to the collector can be identified from the TEM images, their diffraction pattern and the EDX spectrum
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