Each year, millions of dollars are invested on road maintenance and reparation all over the world. In order to minimize costs, one of the main aspects is the early detection of those flaws. Different types of cracks require different types of repairs; therefore, not only a crack detection is required but a crack type classification. Also, the earlier the crack is detected, the cheaper the repar...

The Administrative Justice Court annulled the directive that was issued by the Iranian National Tax Administration. According to the directive, kindergarten, food, commuting, … subsidies are not exempt from the payroll tax. In this research, which is conducted with the descriptive-analytical approach, the exemption or the lack of exemption of the subsidies is studied with regard to the tax law....

Object Retrosigmoid (RS) and translabyrinthine (TL) surgery remain essential treatment approaches for symptomatic or enlarging acoustic neuromas (ANs). We compared nationwide complication rates and payments, independent of tumor characteristics, for these two strategies. Methods We identified 346 and 130 patients who underwent RS and TL approaches, respectively, for AN resection in the 2010-201...

Exploiting an original dataset of non-cash payments during the period between 1996 and 2005, this study analyses the diffusion patterns of non-cash payments in China. Based on both exponential and Gompertz curves, the point of sale (POS) terminal has shown a higher diffusion rate than that of automatic teller machines (ATMs). This result is also robust when a time trend is interacted with rival...

E ven though predictions about a cashless and checkless society have been made for many years, retail payment transactions made with electronic payment instruments still constitute only a small fraction of all payments made in the United States. 1 The rate of growth of electronic payments is estimated to exceed that of paper checks, but the number of checks written still increases each year, an...

The main hypothesis of the paper is that balance-of-payments policies, geared toward exchange rate regimes and capital account openness, influence output growth through two channels: 1. Directly, through their effect on the trade and financial sectors, and 2. Indirectly, through their impact on the probability of a balance-of-payments crisis. The empirical analysis demonstrates that the balance...

BACKGROUND In Switzerland, age is the predominant driver of solidarity transfers in risk adjustment (RA). Concerns have been voiced regarding growing imbalances in cost sharing between young and old insured due to demographic changes (larger fraction of elderly >65 years and rise in average age). Particularly young adults aged 19-25 with limited incomes have to shoulder increasing solidarity bu...

national currency depreciation or appreciation has always been argued seriously among policymakers since changing in exchange rate could cause improvement or deficit in trade balance. these changes affect the trade volume of a country in both short-run and long-run. long-run effects are recognized as the marshall-lerner condition, while short-run effects are analyzed by two concepts: j-curve an...

Introduction. Prior research has documented that unhealthy behaviors result in greater health care use and greater health care costs. However, there are few studies on out-of-pocket expenditure paid by those engaging in unhealthy behaviors. We provide cross-country evidence on the association of smoking, alcohol consumption, and obesity with health care use and health care cost as well as out-o...