Mortality, fertility, and persistent income inequality

Many developing countries are plagued by persistent inequality in income distribution. While a growing body of economic-demographic literature emphasizes differential fertility channel, this paper investigates differential child mortality--differences in child mortality across income groups--as a critical link through which income inequality persists. Using an overlapping generations model in which both child mortality and fertility are endogenously determined by parental choice, this paper demonstrates that differential child mortality and its interaction with differential fertility may generate an "income inequality trap." The trap is characterized by higher child mortality and lower degree of skill formation among the poorer households. The model can also explain the behavior of aggregate fertility and mortality rates for countries at various stages of development, consonant with patterns of demographic transition. The results indicate that provision of public health that raises the productivity of private health spending may be an effective way to reduce income inequality

Borders, mobility and technologies of control

Territorial borders are taking on a new significance, the implications of which are relatively unexplored within the discipline of criminology. This book presents the first systematic attempt to develop a critical criminology of the border and offers a unique treatment of the impact of globalisation and mobility. It focuses on borders and the significance of the activities which take place on and around them. For many the border is an everyday reality, a space in which to live, a land necessary to cross. For states the border space increasingly requires protection and defence; is at the centre of state ideology and performance; is the site for investing significant political and material resources, and is ultimately ungovernable. Providing a wealth of case material from Australia, Europe and North America, it is for students, academics, and practitioners working in the areas of criminology, migration, human geography, international law and politics, globalisation, sociology and cultural anthropology.

Not for profit income tax exemption : is there a hole in the bucket, dear Henry?

Australia’s Future Tax System Review, headed by the then head of the Australian Treasury, and the Productivity Commission’s Research Report on the not for profit sector, both examined the state of tax concessions to Australia’s not for profit sector in the light of the High Court’s decision in Commissioner of Taxation v Word Investments Ltd. Despite being unable to quantify with any certainty the pre- or post-Word Investments cost of the tax concessions, both Reports indicated their support for continuation of the income tax exemption. However, the government acted in the 2011 Budget to target the not for profit income tax concessions more precisely, mainly on competitive neutrality grounds. This article examines the income tax exemption by applying the five taxation design principles, proposed in the Australia’s Future Tax System Review, for assessing tax expenditure. The conclusion is that the exemptions can be justified and, further, that a rationale for the exemption can be consistent with the reasoning in the Word Investments case.

Incentivising private health insurance through the income tax regime : Capitalising on behavioural models

The Australian income tax regime is generally regarded as a mechanism by which the Federal Government raises revenue, with much of the revenue raised used to support public spending programs. A prime example of this type of spending program is health care. However, a government may also decide that the private sector should provide a greater share of the nation's health care. To achieve such a policy it can bring about change through positive regulation, or it can use the taxation regime, via tax expenditures, not to raise revenue but to steer or influence individuals in its desired direction. When used for this purpose, tax expenditures steer taxpayers towards or away from certain behaviour by either imposing costs on, or providing benefits to them. Within the context of the health sector, the Australian Federal Government deploys social steering via the tax system, with the Medicare Levy Surcharge and the 30 percent Private Health Insurance Rebate intended to steer taxpayer behaviour towards the Government’s policy goal of increasing the amount of health provision through the private sector. These steering mechanisms are complemented by the ‘Lifetime Health Cover Initiative’. This article, through the lens of behavioural economics, considers the ways in which these assorted mechanisms might have been expected to operate and whether they encourage individuals to purchase private health insurance.

The taxation of multinational banking income : is the traditional rationale correct?

This article argues that multinational banks have characteristics which are unique and distinguishable from traditional multinational entities. The first distinguishing feature is the unique nature of the services and consequent products supplied by multinational banks, which are aimed at meeting client global demand. The second distinguishing feature is the non-traditional organisational structure that is adopted. This structure, also designed to meet client global demand, introduces issues previously not recognised in the traditional taxation system, which is designed for the structure of traditional multinational entities. The unique differences between traditional multinational entities and multinational banks means there may be the need for a distinct international tax regime. It is argued that there are “outmoded economic assumptions” upon which the present tax laws relating to multinational banks are based. An examination of the unique nature of multinational banks leads to the conclusion that the appropriate tax treatment of these banks is different from the appropriate tax treatment of multinational entities generally.

Experimental studies of wireless communication and GNSS kinematic positioning performance in high-mobility vehicle environments

In order to support intelligent transportation system (ITS) road safety applications such as collision avoidance, lane departure warnings and lane keeping, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) based vehicle positioning system has to provide lane-level (0.5 to 1 m) or even in-lane-level (0.1 to 0.3 m) accurate and reliable positioning information to vehicle users. However, current vehicle navigation systems equipped with a single frequency GPS receiver can only provide road-level accuracy at 5-10 meters. The positioning accuracy can be improved to sub-meter or higher with the augmented GNSS techniques such as Real Time Kinematic (RTK) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP) which have been traditionally used in land surveying and or in slowly moving environment. In these techniques, GNSS corrections data generated from a local or regional or global network of GNSS ground stations are broadcast to the users via various communication data links, mostly 3G cellular networks and communication satellites. This research aimed to investigate the precise positioning system performances when operating in the high mobility environments. This involves evaluation of the performances of both RTK and PPP techniques using: i) the state-of-art dual frequency GPS receiver; and ii) low-cost single frequency GNSS receiver. Additionally, this research evaluates the effectiveness of several operational strategies in reducing the load on data communication networks due to correction data transmission, which may be problematic for the future wide-area ITS services deployment. These strategies include the use of different data transmission protocols, different correction data format standards, and correction data transmission at the less-frequent interval. A series of field experiments were designed and conducted for each research task. Firstly, the performances of RTK and PPP techniques were evaluated in both static and kinematic (highway with speed exceed 80km) experiments. RTK solutions achieved the RMS precision of 0.09 to 0.2 meter accuracy in static and 0.2 to 0.3 meter in kinematic tests, while PPP reported 0.5 to 1.5 meters in static and 1 to 1.8 meter in kinematic tests by using the RTKlib software. These RMS precision values could be further improved if the better RTK and PPP algorithms are adopted. The tests results also showed that RTK may be more suitable in the lane-level accuracy vehicle positioning. The professional grade (dual frequency) and mass-market grade (single frequency) GNSS receivers were tested for their performance using RTK in static and kinematic modes. The analysis has shown that mass-market grade receivers provide the good solution continuity, although the overall positioning accuracy is worse than the professional grade receivers. In an attempt to reduce the load on data communication network, we firstly evaluate the use of different correction data format standards, namely RTCM version 2.x and RTCM version 3.0 format. A 24 hours transmission test was conducted to compare the network throughput. The results have shown that 66% of network throughput reduction can be achieved by using the newer RTCM version 3.0, comparing to the older RTCM version 2.x format. Secondly, experiments were conducted to examine the use of two data transmission protocols, TCP and UDP, for correction data transmission through the Telstra 3G cellular network. The performance of each transmission method was analysed in terms of packet transmission latency, packet dropout, packet throughput, packet retransmission rate etc. The overall network throughput and latency of UDP data transmission are 76.5% and 83.6% of TCP data transmission, while the overall accuracy of positioning solutions remains in the same level. Additionally, due to the nature of UDP transmission, it is also found that 0.17% of UDP packets were lost during the kinematic tests, but this loss doesn't lead to significant reduction of the quality of positioning results. The experimental results from the static and the kinematic field tests have also shown that the mobile network communication may be blocked for a couple of seconds, but the positioning solutions can be kept at the required accuracy level by setting of the Age of Differential. Finally, we investigate the effects of using less-frequent correction data (transmitted at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and 60 seconds interval) on the precise positioning system. As the time interval increasing, the percentage of ambiguity fixed solutions gradually decreases, while the positioning error increases from 0.1 to 0.5 meter. The results showed the position accuracy could still be kept at the in-lane-level (0.1 to 0.3 m) when using up to 20 seconds interval correction data transmission.

The culture of the journey as structure of the landscape: an inquiry on mobility facilities and identity of place

The structure of the travel, meant as cultural activity, is proposed as a key to read and design the urban or rural landscape.

An Econometric Analysis of Inter-Firm Labour Mobility

This paper utilizes the Survey of Work History (1981) data to examine the importance of non-random sampling in the context of a model of interfirm labour mobility. The paper adopts Heckman's two-step procedure in order to estimate a three-equation model incorporating an individual's mobility status as endogenously determined. The main conclusion is that in estimating wage equations it is important to consider the role of job mobility and to correct for the effects of sample-selection bias. The results generally accord with those reported by Osberg et al. (1986) in the only previous Canadian study of job mobility in a sample-selection context.

Recombination, decreased host specificity and increased mobility may have driven the emergence of maize streak virus as an agricultural pathogen

Maize streak virus (MSV; family Geminiviridae, genus Mastrevirus), the causal agent of maize streak disease, ranks amongst the most serious biological threats to food security in subSaharan Africa. Although five distinct MSV strains have been currently described, only one of these - MSV-A - causes severe disease in maize. Due primarily to their not being an obvious threat to agriculture, very little is known about the 'grass-adapted' MSV strains, MSV-B, -C, -D and -E. Since comparing the genetic diversities, geographical distributions and natural host ranges of MSV-A with the other MSV strains could provide valuable information on the epidemiology, evolution and emergence of MSV-A, we carried out a phylogeographical analysis of MSVs found in uncultivated indigenous African grasses. Amongst the 83 new MSV genomes presented here, we report the discovery of six new MSV strains (MSV-F to -K). The non-random recombination breakpoint distributions detectable with these and other available mastrevirus sequences partially mirror those seen in begomoviruses, implying that the forces shaping these breakpoint patterns have been largely conserved since the earliest geminivirus ancestors. We present evidence that the ancestor of all MSV-A variants was the recombinant progeny of ancestral MSV-B and MSV-G/-F variants. While it remains unknown whether recombination influenced the emergence of MSV-A in maize, our discovery that MSV-A variants may both move between and become established in different regions of Africa with greater ease, and infect more grass species than other MSV strains, goes some way towards explaining why MSV-A is such a successful maize pathogen. © 2008 SGM.

Full compensation no longer sacrosanct : reflections on the past and future economic loss ‘cap’ for high income earners

The civil liability provisions relating to the assessment of damages for past and future economic loss have abrogated the common law principle of full compensation by imposing restrictions on the damages award, most commonly by a “three times average weekly earnings” cap. This consideration of the impact of those provisions is informed by a case study of the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal decision, Tuohey v Freemasons Hospital (Tuohey) , which addressed the construction and arithmetic operation of the Victorian cap for high income earners. While conclusions as to operation of the cap outside of Victoria can be drawn from Tuohey, a number of issues await judicial determination. These issues, which include the impact of the damages caps on the calculation of damages for economic loss in the circumstances of fluctuating income; vicissitudes; contributory negligence; claims per quod servitum amisit; and claims by dependants, are identified and potential resolutions discussed.

Mobility and active ageing in suburban environments : findings from in-depth interviews and person-based GPS tracking

Background. Governments face a significant challenge to ensure that community environments meet the mobility needs of an ageing population. Therefore, it is critical to investigate the effect of suburban environments on the choice of transportation and its relation to participation and active ageing. Objective. This research explores if and how suburban environments impact older people’s mobility and their use of different modes of transport. Methods. Data derived from GPS tracking, travel diaries, brief questionnaires, and semistructured interviews were gathered from thirteen people aged from 56 to 87 years, living in low-density suburban environments in Brisbane, Australia. Results. The suburban environment influenced the choice of transportation and out-of-home mobility. Both walkability and public transportation (access and usability) impact older people’s transportation choices. Impracticality of active and public transportation within suburban environments creates car dependency in older age. Conclusion. Suburban environments often create barriers to mobility, which impedes older people’s engagement in their wider community and ability to actively age in place. Further research is needed to develop approaches towards age-friendly suburban environments which will encourage older people to remain active and engaged in older age.