Judul: Analisis Perbandingan Sistem Pajak di Indonesia dengan Australia dalam Perspektif Ekonomi Politik
Abstrak: Tax plays an important role as a source to finance the development of the country, although if the tax ratio and the number of individual taxpayers in Indonesia are compared with other countries, the tax revenue in Indonesia is not optimal yet. This research aims to know about factor that can increase the number of individual taxpayers in Indonesia comparison to Australia. Furthermore the connection between tax system, democracy, and rent-seeking activity; also the effect to tax revenue are analysed. The method is Panel Data Analysis in 15 countries of G-20 include Indonesia and Australia. Data used in this research are tax revenue as percentage of GDP, Democracy Index, Paying Taxes Ranking, and International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) Index from 2008 until 2011. The best model is Fixed Effect Model with cross section weights and white cross section. The estimation shows that a good tax system, full democracies, and the absent of rent-seeking have a significant and positive effect to tax revenue.
Keyword: Panel Data, Rent-Seeking, Democracy, Tax system

Judul: Hubungan antara Tarif Pajak Penghasilan dan Penerimaan Pajak: Analisis Data Negara-negara ASEAN 1987-2011
Abstrak: Penerimaan negara dari pajak memiliki kontribusi terbesar dalam pembiayaan operasional pemerintah dibandingkan dengan sumber pendanaan lainnya. Tujuan penelitian ini untuk menganalisis efektivitas instrumen distribusi pendapatan, yaitu persentase tarif pajak (tax rate) yang optimal dalam memaksimalkan penerimaan. Adapun tingkat optimal tax rate Indonesia dianalisis dengan membandingkan beberapa negara ASEAN, seperti Malaysia, Singapura dan Thailand serta faktor lain yang memengaruhinya, yaitu tax ratio, pertumbuhan ekonomi dan GDP per kapita. Data yang digunakan adalah data sekunder dari perekonomian masing-masing negara pada periode 1987-2011. Hasil dari analisis data panel menggunakan estimasi model fixed effect didapatkan nilai R2 0.9438 yang menandakan bahwa variasi dari perubahan variabel dependen mampu dijelaskan secara serentak oleh variabel-variabel independen sebesar 94.38 persen. Sisanya sebesar 5.62 persen dijelaskan oleh faktor lain yang tidak masuk dalam model. Tax ratio, pertumbuhan ekonomi dan GDP per kapita memiliki pengaruh positif terhadap penerimaan pajak di negara ASEAN.
Keyword: ASEAN, ketimpangan, panel data, tax rate, tax ratio

Judul: Effectiveness of Microwave Oven against B. cereus to Reach Food Safety Objective in Cook-chill Foods
Abstrak: Cook-chill foods are meal that being cooked and then chilled quickly until further consumption. Usually before being consumed, the foods are reheated by the consumers to improve the organoleptic property and also to destroy bacteria. One of the things that need to be considered is that cook-chill foods that are originated from grains like rice or wheat are vulnerable to be contaminated by pathogen, especially Bacillus cereus. Another problem is that on the packaging of specific cook-chill food that being investigated, there is only instruction manual on how to reheat the food with 1800 W microwave oven. Microwave oven that is being used in household level is usually lower than 1000 W, so there is a possibility under-cooking may happen because there is no standardization on how to heat food with microwave on household level. The research was conducted in five steps, which were; (1) investigation of standard plate count and B. cereus count on two cook-chill foods (spaghetti bolognaise and black pepper chicken rice), (2) challenge test on those cook-chill foods to evaluate the growth of B. cereus on cook-chill food on 15oC, (3) challenge test to evaluate inactivation of vegetative cells and spores of B. cereus by microwave oven (850 watt and 410 watt), (4) to evaluate if FSO of those cook-chill foods could be achieved based on data gathered in the previous results, and (5) to study the effect of microwave oven and moist heat against leakages of nucleic acids and proteins of B. cereus. The results of this research were that microwave oven with 850 watt power could still reach food safety objective (FSO) when cook-chill foods were being reheated for the recommended time on the packagings (45 seconds for spaghetti bolognaise and 2 minutes for black pepper chicken rice), however when using 410 watt microwave oven, FSO could not be achieved. The mechanism of which why microwave oven could destroy vegetative cell and spores of B. cereus was also investigated. The result was that heat treatment using microwave oven differed when compared to moist heat since heat treatment using microwave oven caused leakages of nucleic acid and protein content of the vegetative cells and spores of B. cereusin much larger effect than moist heat.
Keyword: cook-chill foods, Bacillus cereus, microwave, rice, spaghetti, food safety objective