BACKGROUND We hypothesized that the economic status of a region might influence quality of care and outcome of patients with severe brain trauma. METHODS Between January 2001 and December 2005, 13 centres enrolled patients with severe brain trauma. Data on accident, treatment and outcomes were collected prospectively. The regions were classified as 'high income' (Austria, five centres), 'uppe...

We study corporate income tax competition when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using financial planning strategies. Several such strategies, particularly intra-corporate lending, appear to be actively pursued by companies to reduce subnational corporate taxes in Canada. A simple theoretical model shows how interjurisdictional tax planning can give rise to asymmetries ...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t This paper considers a sticky-price model with heterogeneous households and financial frictions. Financial frictions lead to imperfect risk-sharing among households with idiosyn-cratic labor incomes. I study implications of imperfect risk-sharing for optimal monetary policy by documenting its impacts on the monetary transmission mechanism, the inflation– ou...

Like many primary products, coffee has long been characterised as a commodity with falling terms of trade and volatile prices. Yet in recent years there has been growing product differentiation in final markets, with premium prices being earned and providing high and sustainable incomes. So far these product rents have been almost entirely appropriated by residents of high income economies. How...

Issue: Two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries with physical and/or cognitive impairment (PCI) who live in the community have three or more chronic conditions and could benefit from integrated medical and social services. Over one-third of those with PCI have incomes under 200 percent of the federal poverty level but are not covered by Medicaid, exposing them to risk of financial burdens and nursi...

Economists tend to favor Pigouvian taxes or cap-and-trade programs to correct the negative externalities of climate change and local pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Arguments against energy taxes, and gasoline taxes more specifically, often include concerns about the regressivity of the tax. Other concerns relate to the geographic incidence of the tax. We study the effect of a ...

[Purpose] This paper attempted to determine the relationship between physical activity of men from Wrocław and their discretionary income. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects were 1,601 male survey respondents aged from 18 to 65 years old. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used for the assessment of physical activity. [Results] Among respondents, low intensity physical activ...

We analyze the taxation of top personal incomes in Germany on the basis of an integrated data file of individual tax returns and a general household survey for the years 1992 2002. The unique feature of this integrated data set is that it includes all taxpayers in the top percentile of the gross income distribution. We show that despite substantial tax base erosion and significant reductions of...