1,721,698 research outputs found
De prijs van gelijkheid
Get PDFOp maandag 26 mei 2008 aanvaardde prof.dr. Bas Jacobs het ambt van bijzonder hoogleraar Openbare financiën en economisch beleid in de Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen, vanwege de Vereniging Trustfonds EUR. In zijn inaugurele rede De prijs van gelijkheid gaat hij op zoek naar de heilige graal van de welvaartseconomie: het vinden van de economisch meest efficiënte manieren om inkomen te verdelen. Na de plechtigheid overhandigde de kersverse hoogleraar het eerste exemplaar van de handelseditie van zijn oratie aan minister van Financiën Wouter Bos.
Elk overheidsingrijpen gaat onvermijdelijk gepaard met ontwrichting van de efficiënte werking van de markt. Iedere euro die de overheid herverdeelt, kost de samenleving vijftig eurocent. Het realiseren van sociaal-economische gelijkheid heeft daarom een hoge prijs. Bas Jacobs stelt dat veel overheidsingrepen efficiënt noch rechtvaardig zijn. Op basis van de meeste recente wetenschappelijke inzichten betoogt hij dat de prijs van gelijkheid omlaag kan door veel doelmatiger te delen.
Jacobs bespreekt onder andere de progressie van de inkomstenbelasting, belastingen op kapitaalinkomen, subsidies op hoger onderwijs, het minimumloon en de fiscale subsidies op het eigen huis en de pensioenen. Hij laat zien dat veel politieke opvattingen van zowel links als rechts op drijfzand zijn gebouwd. Tegelijkertijd prikt hij talloze proefballonnen door, zoals de ongenuanceerde pleidooien voor een vlaktaks, lagere erfenisbelastingen en de levensloopregeling.
Eenhandelseditie van de oratie wordt uitgegeven bij Uitgeverij Bert Bakker:
De prijs van gelijkheid, ISBN 978 90 351 3321
Is Prescott Right? Welfare State Policies and the Incentives to Work, Learn and Retire
Get PDFThis paper bolsters Prescott’s (2004) claim that high taxes are responsible for lacklustre labor market performance in continental European countries. We develop a lifecycle model with endogenous skill formation, endogenous labor supply, and endogenous retirement. Labor taxation distorts not only labor supply, but also education and retirement decisions. Actuarially unfair pensions further exacerbate labor tax distortions on retirement. Education subsidies can nevertheless cushion the adverse impact of taxation on skill formation. Feedbacks between education, labor supply, and retirement are important. The model is simulated with realistic behavioral elasticities that are consistent with microeconometric evidence. If, besides labor supply, also learning and retirement are endogenous, the uncompensated (compensated) elasticity of the tax base equals 0.46 (0.85), which is more than twice as large as the standard uncompensated (compensated) labor supply elasticity of 0.18 (0.40). Furthermore, life-cycle interactions between education, working and retirement are quantitatively important and the interactions raise all behavioral elasticities substantially. For example, the uncompensated labor supply elasticity increases with one-half due to life-cycle interactions (to 0.26). We demonstrate that low European labor supply can be fully explained by taxation without relying on unrealistically high labor supply elasticities. Reducing labor market distortions, cutting benefit levels, lowering tax rates, and making (early) retirement actuarially fairer, therefore boosts labor supply, delays retirement, and stimulates skill formation. In addition, high education subsidies are needed in large welfare states to off-set explicit and implicit tax burdens on human capital investment.skill formation, human capital, labor supply, retirement, tax policy, benefit systems, pension policy, welfare state
Optimal Redistributive Tax and Education Policies in General Equilibrium
Get PDFShould a redistributive government optimally subsidize education to provoke a reduction in the skill premium through general equilibrium effects on wages? To answer this question, this paper studies optimal linear and non-linear redistributive income taxes and education subsidies in two-type models with endogenous human capital formation, endogenous labor supply, and endogenous wage rates. Under optimal linear policies, education should not be subsidized so as to reduce the skill premium. Linear income taxes are distributionally equivalent to (negative) linear education subsidies, but linear taxes do not distort investment in human capital, whether general equilibrium effects are present or not. If skilled labor supply is more elastic than unskilled labor supply, optimal redistributive linear income taxes are lowered as the distributional gains of linear taxes are offset by a rise in the skill premium. Moreover, the optimal linear income tax may even become negative if general equilibrium effects are sufficiently strong. Under non-linear taxation, governments can directly steer the skill premium by exploiting non-linearities in the policy schedules. At the top, the optimal marginal income tax rate is negative, and the optimal marginal education subsidy is positive. At the bottom, the optimal marginal income tax rate is positive, and education is optimally taxed at the margin. Hence, optimal non-linear tax and education policies compress wage differentials, which contributes to redistribution. Simulations show that the top rate and marginal education subsidies are close to zero for a wide range of plausible parameters. Only when high-ability and low-ability workers are rather poor substitutes in production, marginal education subsidies on the high type and marginal education taxes on the low type substantially differ from zero.human capital, general equilibrium, education subsidies, optimal taxation, direct and indirect redistribution
The Marginal Cost of Public Funds is One
Get PDFThis paper develops a Mirrlees (1971) framework with heterogeneous agents to analyze optimal redistributive taxes, optimal provision of public goods and the marginal cost of public funds (MCF). Standard MCF measures are shown to suffer from three defects: i) The MCF for the (non-individualized) lump-sum tax is generally not equal to one. ii) The MCF for distortionary taxes is not directly related to the marginal excess burden. iii) MCF measures for both lump-sum and distortionary taxes are highly sensitive to the choice of the untaxed numéraire good. These problems are caused by using the private rather than the social marginal value of private income to calculate the MCF, and disappear by using the social marginal value of private income. Moreover, by allowing for redistributional concerns, the marginal excess burden of distortionary taxes equals the marginal distributional gain at the optimal tax system. MCF therefore equals one, both for lump-sum and distortionary taxes, and the modified Samuelson rule should not be corrected for the marginal cost of public funds.marginal cost of funds; marginal excess burden; optimal taxation; optimal redistribution; optimal provision of public goods; Samuelson rule
Submarine landslides around the Canary Islands
No full textThe morphology and structure of the submarine flanks of the Canary Islands were mapped using the GLORIA long-range side-scan sonar system, bathymetric multibeam systems, and sediment echosounders. Twelve young (<2 Ma) giant landslides have been identified on the submarine flanks of the Canary Islands up to now. Older landslide events are long buried under a thick sediment cover due to high sedimentation rates around the Canary Islands. Most slides were found on the flanks of the youngest and most active islands of La Palma, El Hierro, and Tenerife, but young giant landslides were also identified on the flanks of the older (15–20 Ma) but still active eastern islands. Large-scale mass wasting is an important process during all periods of major magmatic activity. The long-lived volcanic constructive history of the islands of the Canary Archipelago is balanced by a correspondingly long history of destruction, resulting in a higher landslide frequency for the Canary Islands compared to the Hawaiian Islands, where giant landslides only occur late in the period of active shield growth. The lower stability of the flanks of the Canaries is probably due to the much steeper slopes of the islands, a result of the abundance of highly evolved intrusive and extrusive rocks. Another reason for the enhanced slope instability is the abundance of pyroclastic deposits on Canary Islands resulting from frequent explosive eruptions due to the elevated volatile contents in the highly alkalic magmas. Dike-induced rifting is most likely the main trigger mechanism for destabilization of the flanks. Flank collapses are a major geological hazard for the Canary Islands due to the sector collapses themselves as well as triggering of tsunamis. In at least one case, a giant lateral blast occurred when an active magmatic or hydrothermal system became unroofed during flank collapse
Large-scale slides on the flanks of the Canary Islands
No full textThe Canary Archipelago, located off the West African continental margin, is one of the largest oceanic island groups in the ocean basins (Fig. 1). A general but slightly diffuse westward age progression of the shield phases of the islands was interpreted as evidence for a hot spot origin of the Canary Islands (Wilson 1973; Schmincke 1982; Carracedo et al. 1998). During the last 15 years, morphological studies of the submarine flanks of ocean islands with swath bathymetry, sidescan sonar and high-resolution seismic systems have demonstrated that giant submarine landslides play an important role during the evolut ion of volcanic islands. Landslides on ocean islands are one of the most important transport processes of volcaniclastic material into the volcanic apron. They are a major geological hazard due to the sector collapses themselves as weil as triggering of tsunamis
Real Options and Human Capital Investment
Get PDFThis paper extends the standard human capital model with real options. Real options influence investment behavior when risky investments in human capital are irreversible and individuals can affect the timing of the investment. Option values make individuals more reluctant to invest in human capital and, as a result, required returns on the investment increase. Real options may help to explain a larger human capital premium for higher education, smaller responsiveness of higher education investments to financial incentives, and larger sensitivity of higher education to low-return outcomes and human capital risks. Higher tax rates (or lower subsidies) depress human capital investments, but to a lesser extent than in the standard human capital model. A flat income tax remains neutral if education expenditures are fully deductible.human capital, higher education, risk, irreversible investment, real options, progressive taxation, education subsidies
A chromosome map of Belgica antarctica Jacobs (Diptera: Chironomidae) from Antarctica, including chromosome variability
No full textBelgica antarctica Jacobs (Diptera: Chironomidae) is the only endemic insect found in the Antarctic Peninsula region and has stimulated considerable research interest. Due to recent rapid changes in regional climate in Antarctica, there is growing interest in studying the responses of this species to environmental changes, in particular at the chromosomal level. Chromosomal inversions are known to play an important role in speciation and adaptation in many insect species, but their frequencies in natural populations are poorly understood. In the current study, we provide the first standard polytene chromosome map for B. antarctica, which will enable the precise location of chromosomal abnormalities in future studies. We further analysed chromosomal polymorphisms in fourth-instar larvae collected from two different locations on Galindez Island, Argentine Islands, western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. We found four previously reported and two new inherited inversions, and we discuss their possible adaptive role in response to environmental stressors in the Antarctic Peninsula region. Our data provide a foundation for future studies exploring the potential role of B. antarctica chromosomal polymorphisms in adaptation to the changing environment
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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