In this dissertation we analyze the role of parties’ electoral competition in aggregating voters’ preferences over policy and its impact on tax design. The representation of voters’ interests is central for the analysis of public finance since the issue of aggregation is closely linked to the tradeoff between efficiency and redistribution, and the size and composition of public spending. Parties’ aggregation of preferences is related to the mechanism in which policy makers (parties) weigh the relative merits of competing goals of the tax system (in our analysis, redistribution versus efficiency), and reveals the welfare calculus throughout parties identify groups of individuals who might be beneficiated (hurt) by policy changes. In the first essay we analyze the influence of voters in modifying tax policy through tax initiatives. In this essay we argue that the process of aggregation of preferences between the competition for votes in a representative democracy and the majority rule are different. This, in turn, might lead to the approval of a tax rate limit (TRL) initiative. We argue that the rationale for a TRL proposal is to substitute feasible tax structures rather than to constrain the government’s power to collect taxes. In addition, we provide a model that predicts the tax structure that would arise as a result of a TRL The second essay addresses the role of voters’ partisan attitudes in the determination of fiscal policies. We argue that partisan attitudes and its distribution across the electorate influence the proportion of the expected votes that different coalitions deliver in the election. We identify conditions in which voters’ partisan attitudes affect the provision of a public good and the redistributive properties of the tax structure. The third essay extends our previous analysis of the impact of voters’ partisan attitudes on tax design by incorporating parties that are policy motivated. In this setting, the relative merits of efficiency versus redistribution in designing the tax system are determined by the process of aggregation of voters’ preferences and parties’ preferences over policy. The conflict between parties and the electorate’s preferences over tax policy depends on voters’ partisan attitudes. In particular, voters’ party affiliation soft parties’ electoral constraints, allowing parties to advance the interests of their constituents. The model predicts that redistribution (efficiency) will play a more prominent role for a party that represents a coalition of low (high) income individuals with a high (low) taste for public goods.

The effects of feeding with two high energy diets ( high carbohydrate and high lipid) and the feeding regime of the two diets on growth, feeding conversion rate, and body composition of the cobia were studied. Based on the observation of lipid redistribution under dietary regime change in rats, this study was aimed to understand how regime change affects the tissue lipid content in the cobia. The study had three parts: preliminary experiment, experiment I, and experiment II. The preliminary experiment was designed to find the proper time to switch the high energy diets and to see the adaptation of cobia to the highe energy dietary treatments. The experiment I was conducted to monitor the growth and body composition of cobia fed for thirty-two days with different experimental diets, including control diets, high carbohydrate diets (HC), high lipid diets (HL), and different feeding regimes (HC¡÷HL: feeding the HC diet for the first sixteen days and the HL diet for the subsequent sixteen days; HL¡÷HC: feeding the HL diet for the first sixteen days and the HC diet for the subsequent sixteen days. The experiment II was studied serum concentration of glucose, triacylglycerol, and free fatty acids and tissues triacylglycerol concentration in liver and white muscle. The fish fed with the HC diet had higher body weight and lower feeding conversion rate than the HL group in first sixteen days; however, the growth of the two groups was not significantly different during the thirty-two day period. The lipid content of dorsal muscle was significantly higher in HC¡÷HL than that in HL¡÷HC; wherease, the lipid content of ventral muscle and viscera was not signficantly affected. The concentrations of serum triacylglycerol, free fatty acid, and relative mean ratio of triacylglycerol in muscle to triacylglycerol in liver were significantly affected. The results of relative mean ratio of serum TG to serum FFA and relative mean ratio of muscle TG to liver TG, suggest that high carbohydrate diet drives de nova lipid production in liver, which circulates to the peripheral tissues for storage as triacylglycerol. High lipid diet preferentially offers energy for lipolysis to produce energy. These results are consistant with the results in rats. Our results show that high energy diets provided a higher growth rate than the control diet, but there were no growth difference in cobia fed high carbohydrate diets, or high lipid diets, or between different feeding regimes. The cobia fed the high carbohydrate diet and the high lipid diet might use different ways for lipid accumulation. These fed the high carbohydrate diet had formed more triacylglycerol than that these fed high lipid diets. The feeding regime shift between the high carbohydrate diet and the high lipid diet significantly affect the the lipid content of the dorsal muscle in the cobia.

High Mach-number compressible flows with heat release are inherently more complicated than incompressible flows due to, among other reasons, the activation of the thermal energy mode. Such flow fields can experience significant fluctuations in density, temperature, viscosity, conductivity and specific heat, which affect velocity and pressure fluctuations. Furthermore, the flow field cannot be assumed to be dilatation-free in high Mach numbers and even in low Mach-number flows involving combustion, or in boundary layers on heated walls. The main issue in these high-speed and highly-compressible flows is the effect of thermal gradients and fluctuations on turbulence. The thermal field has various routes through which it affects flow structures of compressible turbulence. First, it has direct influence through pressure, which affects turbulence via pressure-strain correlation. The indirect effects of thermal fields on compressible turbulence are through the changes in flow properties. The high temperature gradients alter the transport coefficient and compressibility of the flow. The objective of this work is to answer the following questions: How do temperature fluctuations change the compressible flow structure and energetics? How does compressibility in the flow affect the non-linear pressure redistribution process? What is the main effect of spatial transport-coefficient variation? We perform direct numerical simulations (DNS) to answer the above questions. The investigations are categorized into four parts: 1) Turbulent energy cascade and kinetic-internal energy interactions under the influence of temperature fluctuations; 2) Return-to-isotropy of anisotropic turbulence under the influence of large temperature fluctuations; 3) The effect of turbulent Mach number and dilatation level on small-scale (velocity-gradient) dynamics; 4) The effect of variable transport-coefficients (viscosity and diffusivity) on cascade and dissipation processes of turbulence. The findings lead to a better understanding of temperature fluctuation effects on non-linear processes in compressible turbulence. This improved understanding is expected to provide direction for improving second-order closure models of compressible turbulence.

In many parallel programs, run-time data redistribution is usually required to enhance data locality and reduce remote memory access on the distributed memory multicomputers. For the heterogeneous computation environment, irregular data redistributions can be used to adjust data assignment. Since data redistribution is performed at run-time, there is a performance trade-off between the efficiency of the new data distribution for a subsequent phase of an algorithm and the cost of redistributing array among processors. Thus, efficient methods for performing data redistribution are of great importance for the development of distributed memory compilers for data-parallel programming languages. For the regular data redistribution, two approaches are presented in this dissertation, indexing approach and packing/unpacking approach. In the indexing approach, we propose a generalized basic-cycle calculation (GBCC) technique to efficiently generate the communication sets for a BLOCK-CYCLIC(s) over P processors to BLOCK-CYCLIC(t) over Q processors data redistribution. In the packing/unpacking approach, we present a User-Defined Types (UDT) method to perform BLOCK-CYCLIC(s) to BLOCK-CYCLIC(t) redistribution, using MPI user-defined datatypes. This method reduces the required memory buffers and avoids unnecessary movement of data. For the irregular data redistribution, in this dissertation, an Essential Cycle Calculation (ECC) method will be presented. The above methods are originally developed for one dimension array. However, the multi-dimension array can also be performed by simply applying these methods dimension by dimension starting from the first (last) dimension if array is in column-major (row-major).

The problem with unequal distribution of land ownership, in developing countries, has been debated in numerous papers. It is important to solve this problem and one of the major contributions in finding a solution is the implementation of a land reform. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the outcome of two different approaches to land reform, i.e. coercive and market based, and to find out how successful they are in reducing the concentration of land ownership in a sustainable direction. The conclusion of this paper is that neither of the approaches alone is successful in this task, the strength lies instead in a combination of the coercive and market based approach.

This work examines the role of charge redistribution in the self-discharge of electrochemical capacitor electrodes. Electrochemical capacitors are charge storage devices which have high power capability and a long cycle life, but have a low energy density compared to other devices, coupled with a high rate of self-discharge which further diminishes the available energy. The mechanisms of self-discharge in electrochemical capacitors are poorly understood, and it is important to gain a better understanding of the electrode processes which lead to self-discharge, in order to minimize self-discharge and enhance electrochemical capacitor performance. To learn more about charge redistribution and its role in the self-discharge of electrochemical capacitors, multiple self-discharge experiments were performed on carbons with various surface areas/pore structures and in various electrolytes. Charge redistribution was also examined in a model pore (a transmission line circuit based on de Levie?s model of a porous electrode) and results from this model were compared to the self-discharge of a high surface-area carbon. Results demonstrate that charge redistribution is a major component of the self-discharge in high surface-area carbons. Results also indicate that charge redistribution requires a much longer time than previously thought (tens of hours rather than minutes) which further highlights the importance of charge redistribution during self-discharge. Therefore when performing mechanistic studies of self-discharge in electrochemical capacitors, it is important that effects of charge redistribution are not neglected. The self-discharge profiles of various pore shapes were also examined using the model pore, and results emphasize the superiority of cone and cylindrically shaped pores, and the disadvantages of restrictive pore mouths and bottlenecks for high power applications.

The primary aim of this thesis is to advance economics' understanding of the organization of political parties, for the purpose of explaining the policy choices that result from collective decision procedures. Motivating this inquiry is the benign neglect that the political party as an organization has long suffered from in economics, in a manner that mirrors depictions of the firm in early neoclassical analysis. Accordingly, this thesis first considers the question of the relative influence of different contributors to the political parties' electoral activities, i.e. special-interest groups contributing money and individual party activists volunteering their time, on their choice of policy platforms. It is found that the presence of activists induces parties to offer differentiated policy platforms, even in the presence of a special-interest group whose contributions are perfectly substitutable with those of activists. Concurrently, the special interest's influence is to bias the parties' platforms towards its preferred policy. Second, the internal dynamics of parties organized into factions sharing common goals are investigated. It is studied how they affect the party leader's choice of policies while in office and her accountability to voters, through the threat of her removal from the party's helm. While occasionally acting as a distortion on the election mechanism's effectiveness for keeping politicians accountable, the presence of the politician's party is accountability-enhancing especially in the presence of other distortions. This contributes to a second-best theory of politics. This thesis' secondary aim is to contribute to restoring the use of moral and ethical concerns in normative analysis and political economy. This is warranted by the fact that moral and ethical motives matter more in such contexts than in most market transactions, where rational self-interested behaviour largely prevails. This objective is primarily represented in this thesis' study of normative analysis as conditioned on a societal consensus. This study asks how redistributive policies are to be optimally-chosen when the extent of societal co-operation regarding work participation depends on a social norm. Its main finding is that constraining the social planner's choices on the extent of societal cohesion restricts the scope of redistribution compared with an unconstrained social planner. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2011-11-03 12:16:33.632

Η παρούσα διατριβή μελετά λεπτομερώς, για το διάστημα 1998 – 2007, τα επίπεδα, τη δομή και τη διαχρονική εξέλιξη της φτώχειας και της ανισότητας στην Ελλάδα, καθώς και τη σχετική θέση της Ελλάδας στα πλαίσια της ΕΕ. Χρησιμοποιήθηκαν τα στοιχεία των Ερευνών Οικογενειακών Προϋπολογισμών (ΕΟΠ) του 1998/99 και 2004/05 της ΕΣΥΕ και των Ερευνών Εισοδήματος και Συνθηκών Διαβίωσης (EU SILC) των ετών 2004-2007 της EUROSTAT. Μονάδα ανάλυσης είναι το μέλος του πληθυσμού και χρησιμοποιούνται οι κατανομές της ισοδύναμης συνολικής δαπάνης και ισοδύναμου συνολικού εισοδήματος κατά κεφαλή, λαμβάνοντας υπόψη το μέγεθος και τη σύνθεση του νοικοκυριού (χρήση κλιμάκων ισοδυναμίας). Βασικό συμπέρασμα της διατριβής είναι ότι η φτώχεια και ανισότητα μειώθηκε δραματικά μεταξύ 1998 και 2004, όπου η Ελληνική κοινωνία αύξησε την ευημερία των μελών της, ιδίως αυτών που βρισκόντουσαν στο κάτω άκρο της κατανομής του εισοδήματος. Η παραπάνω ανάλυση υποδεικνύει ότι η είσοδος της Ελλάδας στο ενιαίο νόμισμα ωφέλησε κατά πολύ την Ελληνική οικονομία και το σύνολο του πληθυσμού. Το διάστημα 2004-2007 η κατάσταση φαίνεται να χειροτερεύει ελαφρά, όπου οι μικρές αυξήσεις που καταγράφονται αποτελούν τα πρώτα σημάδια της οικονομικής κρίσης που ακολούθησε μετά το τέλος της εξεταζόμενης περιόδου. Ιδιαίτερα ανησυχητικό είναι ότι η Ελλάδα βρίσκεται συνέχεια στις χειρότερες πέντε θέσεις της κατάταξης των Ευρωπαϊκών χωρών, τόσο ως προς τα επίπεδα φτώχειας όσο και της ανισότητας, ενώ, διαχρονικά χειροτερεύει η θέση της στη συνολική κατάταξη. Τα αποτελέσματα της διατριβής επιβεβαιώνουν αποτελέσματα προηγούμενων μελετών ότι η ανισότητα στην Ελλάδα πηγάζει κυρίως από τις διαφορές περισσότερο εντός παρά ανάμεσα στις πληθυσμιακές ομάδες. Αυτό οδηγεί στη διαμόρφωση πολιτικών που στόχο έχουν τη μείωση της εσωτερικής ανισότητας στις διάφορες πληθυσμιακές ομάδες, ξεκινώντας από αυτές είτε με τη μεγαλύτερη ανισότητα είτε από αυτές που συνεισφέρουν σημαντικά στη συνολική ανισότητα. Ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον για τη μελέτη της φτώχειας και της ανισότητας προκαλεί η χρήση της τεχνικής bootstrap και ο στατιστικός έλεγχος των διαστημάτων εμπιστοσύνης των μέσων όρων που χρησιμοποιεί η παρούσα διατριβή για την επιβεβαίωση της σημαντικότητας των μειώσεων που παρατηρήθηκαν στους δείκτες φτώχειας και ανισότητας μεταξύ 1998 και 2004, τουλάχιστον για τρεις πληθυσμιακές ομάδες, στις οικογένειες με αρχηγό συνταξιούχο του ΟΓΑ, στις οικογένειες με μέλη στον αγροτικό τομέα και στις οικογένειες με τρία ή περισσότερα παιδιά. Η προσομοίωση σεναρίων αύξησης των ενεργειακών τιμών υπέδειξαν τη σπουδαιότητα ελέγχου των ενεργειακών τιμών, ιδιαίτερα στα καύσιμα κίνησης και θέρμανσης, καθώς ακόμα και μικρές αυξήσεις της τάξης του 10% προκαλούν μεγάλη δυσχέρεια σε αρκετά άτομα, ενώ οι πραγματικές αυξήσεις είναι σε αρκετές περιόδους πολύ μεγαλύτερες. Η προσομοίωση σεναρίων αναδιανομής, αντίστοιχα, υπέδειξε ότι υπάρχουν σενάρια αναδιανομής με μηδενικό δημοσιονομικό κόστος που δεν προβλέπεται να προκαλέσουν ιδιαίτερες κοινωνικές αναταραχές και βελτιώνουν την υπάρχουσα κατάσταση της φτώχειας και της ανισότητας. / This doctoral dissertation explores in detail, for the years 1998 – 2007, the levels, the structure and the evolution over time of poverty and inequality in Greece, and the relative position of Greece inside EE. household income and expenditure data from the last two Household Budget Surveys (HBS) conducted in 1998/99 and 2004/05 by the National Statistical Service of Greece (NSSG) and household income data from Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU SILC) survey for the years 2004 -2007 conducted by EUROSTAT are used. The individual is the unit of analysis and distributions of total equivalence expenditure and total equivalence income per capita, take into account the size and the composition of the households using “family equivalence scales”. This dissertation concludes that poverty and inequality reduced dramatically between 1998 and 2004, where Greek society and especially people in the lower edge of the distribution of income (or/and expenditure) experienced an increased prosperity. This analysis indicates that the entry in Eurozone benefited well Greek economy and the entire population. Between the years 2004 and 2007, the situation seems a little worsened, where small increments are reported THAT can be the first signs of the oncoming economic crisis that followed the end of this period. In general, Greece is constantly in the last five places of the ranking of European countries, in terms both of poverty and inequality levels, while its position worsened during that period. The dissertation results confirm results from previous studies indicating that inequality in Greece rise mainly from inequalities within rather than between population subgroups. This leads to form politics targeting the elimination of inequality within population subgroups, starting from the groups with greater internal inequality or from the groups that contribute the most in overall inequality. Of great interest in the study of poverty and inequality is the use of bootstrap technique and the statistical test of confidence intervals of means that this dissertation uses for the verification of the significance of the decrements observed in poverty and inequality indices between 1998 and 2004, at least for three population groups, the households that have at least one member with income from agricultural occupation, the households with three or more children, and the households whose head gets a pension from the Agricultural Insurance Organisation (OGA). The simulation of scenarios of increased energy prices indicates the importance of controlling energy prices, especially for gasoline and heating oil, since even small increments of 10% of their prices cause great difficulties in people with incomes around poverty line, whilst actual increments in energy prices are much larger in several periods of time. The simulation of different scenarios of income redistribution indicates, respectively, that there are redistribution scenarios with zero fiscal cost, well targeted and not expected to cause considerable social unrest.

Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS) / Land reform in South Africa emerged as one of the important policies for reconciliation, reconstruction and development of the country after years of racial segregation. Its implementation has been three-fold i.e. land restitution, redistribution and tenure reform. The initial sub-programmes of land redistribution i.e. Settlement Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) and Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) have been confronted with numerous challenges and they have been criticised for influencing group owned projects due to their grant funding models. SLAG required beneficiaries to qualify as households and its failure to date has been largely attributed to unresolved conflicts amongst group members. Under LRAD, although beneficiaries qualified as individuals, the number of grants continued to be challenged by the increasing land prices, and as a result, group-owned projects continued to be created to match the land prices. Both models were demand-driven under the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ principle. In 2006, government introduced a new model called the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS) which is a ‘supply-driven’ model but operating within the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ principle. The structural changes introduced in 2010 placed PLAS as the sole land acquisition model under land redistribution. This research investigates the manner in which the implementation of this model assisted to resolve the gaps identified in its predecessors and the reasons thereof. Additionally, the research also investigates characteristics which persisted throughout and why such features persisted. The policy shift from a ‘demand-driven’ to a ‘supply-driven’ model has brought changes in terms of planning, implementation and resource mobilization. To achieve this, the researcher identified three cases where indepth research was conducted, and interviewed key roles placers from the national and provincial departments, and the local municipality. A questionnaire and semi-structures interviews were used to collect the data.

This thesis discuss the phenomenon in income taxes during last decade - the flat tax. The paper analyzes historical development of income taxes and ideas of flat tax, how it worked in history and how economists elaborated different proposals of flat tax in 20th century. The main accent has concept of american economists Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka, which is well-developed and which was the lodestar of czech tax reform in 2008. Thesis consists of analysis of their theoretical model, its effects and consequences. The comparison of czech implementation with original concept follows on some model examples of czech taxpayers. That illustrates how the implementation worked out.