For thesis abstract select View Thesis Title, Contents and Abstract

本文前段以Barro(1990)一文中的“生產性政府支出”模型為基礎，依次融入定額、比例、線性累進與級距累進四種所得租稅制度。文中除了對各稅制與經濟成長的討論外，對公共資本的在各稅制下的配置問題亦作了探討；除此之外，亦觀察各稅制對原本生產函數的影響，以致在長期時不同的租稅制度下的經濟發展有不同的結果。 本文後段，藉著傳統以個體為出發點租稅逃漏的探討，我們將逃漏租稅及政府偵查的機制放入了模型當中。討論中發現，累進性的租稅除了扭曲資源配置，也妨礙了私人資本的形成，以致經濟漸走下坡；由家戶所得規避的行為，可以讓使用無效率的資源轉供家戶利用，重新恢復經濟的成長。另外，本文亦對政府所得級距精簡的租稅改革措施提供了理論基礎。

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2006. / Supervisor: Thomas F. Crossley. Includes bibliographical references.

La plupart des applications des avions drones sont liées à l'observation d'événements au sol. En particulier, les suivi de cibles terrestres mobiles, qu'elles soient statiques, lentes ou rapides, est une tâche essentielle pour un drone. L'objectif global de la thèse est de proposer des méthodes qui permettent à un drone de suivre une cible terrestre, dans les conditions suivantes: - Le drone est de type voilure fixe équipé d'une caméra monoculaire. - Présence d'obstacles qui occultent la visibilité de zones au sol. - Existence de zones d'exclusion aérienne qui limitent le mouvement aérien. - Restrictions sur le champ de vue du capteur qui assure le suivi (caméra) - Différents comportements de la cible : elle peut évoluer librement ou sous contraintes dynamiques (cas d'une voiture par exemple), et peut être neutre ou évasive~: dans ce dernier cas, elle peut exploiter la présence d'obstacles pour éviter d'être perçue par le drone. Trois approches pour aborder ce problème sont proposées dans la thèse : - Une méthode basée aux lois de contrôle et de la navigation, - Une méthode basée sur la prédiction des déplacements de la cible, - Et une approche basée sur la théorie des jeux. Des résultats obtenus par des simulations réalistes et avec un drone sont présentés, pour évaluer et comparer les avantages et inconvénients de chacune des approches. Des extensions au cas "multi-drones" sont aussi proposées.

<p>BACKGROUND The economic crimes related to the taxation authorities (SKM), aim at evading paying taxes and/or wrongly obtaining tax revenue. SKM has noticed that many newly established companies have intended to be carried on, only for a short period of time and with the aim of generating grant-revenues and in the meantime omit to pay or wrongly account for taxes. SKM wants to investigate the possibilities to develop a method of analysis to identify those corporations. </p><p>PURPOSE The purpose of this essay is to make a survey of, and identify companies, who fail in their obligations concerning income-tax return and paying taxes and charges and to try to see what is characteristic for those companies in order to find out a method of analysis. Further a study of literature will be done especially concerning who will commit economic crimes and the reasons why they do it. </p><p>REALISATION I have investigated how the 251 corporations which were registered for F-tax at the local tax office of Eastern Gothenburg (SKR) during 1996 have handled their settlements and income-tax returns from the registration1996 until 1998. I have worked with my essay under guidance of Olle Thegerström and I have under observance of the secrecy of the taxation authorities taken part of all information that have been necessary to fulfil this work. </p><p>RESULTS From the variables that I have used in my investigation I don't think that it is possible to develop a method to anticipate which companies who will fail in their obligations to SKM. That is not to say that there are not structures, which can anticipate how a company will develop. I think that it is values of the manager of business, which to a large extent direct how the company will act in different situations. His values influence in their turn a great number of factors. In that case a model would have to consist of unreasonably many variables related to individual performance. Such a model would be practically impossible and according to my opinion unacceptable from an ethical point of view to use in practice.</p>

BACKGROUND The economic crimes related to the taxation authorities (SKM), aim at evading paying taxes and/or wrongly obtaining tax revenue. SKM has noticed that many newly established companies have intended to be carried on, only for a short period of time and with the aim of generating grant-revenues and in the meantime omit to pay or wrongly account for taxes. SKM wants to investigate the possibilities to develop a method of analysis to identify those corporations. PURPOSE The purpose of this essay is to make a survey of, and identify companies, who fail in their obligations concerning income-tax return and paying taxes and charges and to try to see what is characteristic for those companies in order to find out a method of analysis. Further a study of literature will be done especially concerning who will commit economic crimes and the reasons why they do it. REALISATION I have investigated how the 251 corporations which were registered for F-tax at the local tax office of Eastern Gothenburg (SKR) during 1996 have handled their settlements and income-tax returns from the registration1996 until 1998. I have worked with my essay under guidance of Olle Thegerström and I have under observance of the secrecy of the taxation authorities taken part of all information that have been necessary to fulfil this work. RESULTS From the variables that I have used in my investigation I don't think that it is possible to develop a method to anticipate which companies who will fail in their obligations to SKM. That is not to say that there are not structures, which can anticipate how a company will develop. I think that it is values of the manager of business, which to a large extent direct how the company will act in different situations. His values influence in their turn a great number of factors. In that case a model would have to consist of unreasonably many variables related to individual performance. Such a model would be practically impossible and according to my opinion unacceptable from an ethical point of view to use in practice.

In this thesis, a solution to the multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) search and intercept problem for a moving target is presented. For the search phase, an adapted diffusion-based algorithm is used to manage the target uncertainty while individual UAVs are controlled with a hybrid receding horizon / potential method. The coordinated search is made possible by an uncertainty weighting process. The team intercept phase algorithm is a behavioural approach based on the analytical solution of Isaac's Single-Pursuer/Single-Evader (SPSE) homicidal chau ffeur problem. In this formulation, the intercepting control is taken to be a linear combination of the individual SPSE controls that would exist for each of the evader/pursuer pairs. A particle swarm optimizer is applied to find approximate optimal weighting coefficients for discretized intervals of the game time. Simulations for the team search, team intercept and combined search and intercept problem are presented.

The dissertation aims at broadening our understanding of tax evasion and government spending in developing countries. It comprises three essays. The first essay deals with estimation of tax evasion in a cross-section of developing countries by estimating their underground economies using the currency demand method. By including enforcement parameters of the tax authorities as another factor of tax evasion in the currency demand equation, it presents theory-consistent tax evasion measurement. Our estimation strategy includes the use of the Arellano-Bond dynamic panel data method that is suitable for correcting the endogeneity problem in the currency demand estimation. The study finds substantial underground economy in developing countries, ranging from 2-67 percent of GDP. The second essay is concerned with time series measurement of the underground economy in South Africa using the currency demand method. Unlike other similar studies on South Africa, it gives sufficient attention to the unit root problem that is common in time series analysis of the currency demand method. Using the Error Correction Method (ECM), it investigates the relationship between the tax rate and the currency demand, and presents yearly estimates of the underground economy for the period 1965-2002. The third essay deals with the behavior of government spending in South Africa for the period 1960-2002. Since South Africa went through various political and macroeconomic shocks during this period, we augment measures of these shocks to the standard median voter model to assess the determinants of government spending in South Africa. Using the Error Correction Method (ECM), we investigate the long-run and short-run behavior of government spending. We find that, in addition to the tax share and the income of the median voter, macroeconomic and political shocks were also significant factors in determining government spending in South Africa. This study broadens our understanding of the behavior of government spending in the presence of political and macroeconomic shocks that are common in small open developing economies.

This dissertation comprises two essays that attempt to determine, empirically, the relationship between personal income taxation and income inequality. The first essay examines whether income inequality is affected by the structural progressivity of national income tax systems. Using detailed personal income tax schedules for a large panel of countries, we develop and estimate comprehensive, time-varying measures of structural progressivity of national income tax systems over the 1981–2005 period. Our findings suggest that progressivity has a strong negative effect on inequality in reported gross and net income and that this negative effect is strongest in countries whose institutional framework supports pro-poor redistribution. However, the effect of progressivity on true inequality, which is approximated by consumption-based measures of the GINI coefficient, is significantly smaller. The second essay relies on household level data and complements the first in its empirical approach. We simulate the distributional impact of the Russian personal income tax (PIT) following the flat tax reform of 2001 using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. We use a series of counterfactuals to decompose the change in the distribution of net income into a direct (tax) effect and an indirect behavioral effect. As expected, the direct tax effect increased net income inequality. Changes in the pre-tax distribution, on the other hand, had a large negative impact on inequality thus leading to an overall decline in net income inequality. We also find that the tax-induced evasion response increased reported net income inequality while reducing consumption based measures of net income inequality.

In this thesis, a solution to the multi-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) search and intercept problem for a moving target is presented. For the search phase, an adapted diffusion-based algorithm is used to manage the target uncertainty while individual UAVs are controlled with a hybrid receding horizon / potential method. The coordinated search is made possible by an uncertainty weighting process. The team intercept phase algorithm is a behavioural approach based on the analytical solution of Isaac's Single-Pursuer/Single-Evader (SPSE) homicidal chau ffeur problem. In this formulation, the intercepting control is taken to be a linear combination of the individual SPSE controls that would exist for each of the evader/pursuer pairs. A particle swarm optimizer is applied to find approximate optimal weighting coefficients for discretized intervals of the game time. Simulations for the team search, team intercept and combined search and intercept problem are presented.