This paper aims to provide a quantitative analysis of the influence of an aging population on the financing of Japan’s universal health insurance system and potential reform policies. We construct a general equilibrium life-cycle model to study the effects of aging on the tax burden, individual behaviors, the aggregate economy, and welfare. We also evaluate various policy alternatives designed ...

• Health benefits a big potential target for raising revenue: President Bush’s FY 2008 budget estimates all employee benefits-related “tax expenditures” (government revenue foregone due to special tax treatment) will amount to $328 billion next year, or 34 percent of the $961 billion worth of total tax expenditures in the federal budget. Tax-favored employment-based health insurance benefits ac...

Flavones correspond to a flavonoid subgroup that is widely distributed in the plants, and which can be synthesized by different pathways, depending on whether they contain C- or O-glycosylation and hydroxylated B-ring. Flavones are emerging as very important specialized metabolites involved in plant signaling and defense, as well as key ingredients of the human diet, with significant health ben...

OBJECTIVE Numerous scientific studies show that certain combinations of dietary and/or lifestyle factors produce health benefits which are greater than the sum of the benefits associated with each factor alone. To address an existing knowledge gap, we assessed the extent to which individuals understand that certain combinations present these 'synergistic health benefits'. DESIGN Health benefi...

Among the distortions generated by inflation, those caused by its interaction with taxation are particularly important. Due to the non-indexation of the tax system, inflation exacerbates the inefficiencies generated by taxation. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the welfare effects of these distortions in New Zealand. By using a stylised model of the New Zealand tax system, the tax burden on...

A Bearing-Only TMA running on a submarine, which can exploit the crossbearing effect from sensors installed at different locations needs no own manouevre for convergence, if the parallax between the involved bearings exceeds a certain value. In this paper we discuss some results for the cases where data from a Towed Array is fused with data from an on-board sensor or the data of 2 on-board sens...

It is about ten years that early adopters started KM initiatives. In recent years we have witnessed, a divide in academic and practitioner discussions as to the effects of KM: One side argues that KM is a passing management fad that has had little or no effect on business performance. Others hold that KM initiatives may well have positive effects provided the initiative the right approach is ta...

In 1974, approximately 28.4 million active workers participating in almost 52,000 health plans on their jobs were covered by in-hospital health insurance benefits. A survey of these plans, conducted for the Social Security Administration by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, revealed that not all workers are automatically entitled to benefits on the first day they report for work. More than three-...