bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear Fracture Mechanics—Diffuse Crack Model
Authors: Bažant Zdeněk P. , Le Jia-Liang , Salviato Marco
Published: January 2022

The real fracture process zone (FPZ) in all materials has not only a finite length, but also a finite width, which is particularly important for quasibrittle materials. The width matters, especially in presence of crack parallel stresses. It means that, instead of a scalar stress-displacement relation, fracture needs to be described by a realistic tensorial softening damage constitutive model, for which the microplane model is a particularly effective choice. The easiest way to do that is to use the crack band model, which by now dominates in concrete and aircraft composites in industry. First the need for such a model is established by analyzing bifurcation and stability of equilibrium load-displacement response of a structure, and by demonstrating the necessity of a localization limiter, which represents the effective width of the FPZ dictated by material heterogeneity. For the cases where fracture is known to localize, as is typical for reinforced concrete, simple rules for scaling the postpeak response to preserve the correct energy dissipation are derived, and implementation in FE analysis is outlined. The nonlocal integral and gradient approaches are discussed as alternative models having some advantages and disadvantages. Finally, discrete computational lattice and particle models, with LDPM as a particularly effective choice, are described.
Quasibrittle Size Effect Analysis in Practical Problems
Authors: Bažant Zdeněk P. , Le Jia-Liang , Salviato Marco
Published: January 2022

This chapter demonstrates applications to size effect analysis in a cornucopia of important practical problems of concrete, rock, sea ice, bone, fiber composites, nanocomposite, sandwich structures, and metal composite joints. Keen attention is devoted to the formidable problem of shear failure of RC beams and slabs. This failure, which is actually triggered by crack-parallel compression, underlies the size effect factor recently incorporated into the design code of American Concrete Institute. The analysis of compression failure and size effect is extended to the breakout of deep boreholes and the propagation of kink bands in fiber-polymer composites. Stable measurement of postpeak softening in textile composites and size effects in delamination fracture composites are also analyzed. Further discussion deals with sideways cracks in highly orthotropic fiber composites, and with size effects observed in bone fracture, nanocomposites and hybrid metal-composite joints. Reliability of polycrystalline silicon MEMS is shown to require quasibrittle size effect analysis.
Overview of History
Authors: Bažant Zdeněk P. , Le Jia-Liang , Salviato Marco
Published: January 2022

The last chapter briefly sketches the rich century-long history of fracture mechanics, with an additonal quasibrittle focus. The mainstream milestones were Griffith's 1921 introduction of energy criterion of crack propagation, Irwin's 1958 discovery of the relation of the energy release rate to the stress intensity factor of the near-tip singular stress field, Barenblatt's 1959 conception of the cohesive crack model, and Rice's 1966 discovery of the J-integral giving the energy flux into tip crack tip. Progress was spurred by the breakup of welded Liberty ships at sea and of Commet jetliners in flight, and later by many sudden shear failures of RC structures. At the interface with structural safety the main milestone was Weibull's 1939 introduction of his namesake distribution and statistical size effect in brittle failure. Hillerborg's 1976 fictitious crack model for concrete, essentially equivalent to the cohesive crack model, was a boost for computer simulation of concrete fracture. An even stronger impetus was, during 1984-1991, the gradual emergence, during 1976-87, of the crack band and nonlocal models which can capture the tensorial behavior of the FPZ, and of the energetic size effect law. Evolution of quasibrittle fracture mechanics continues until today (2020), e.g., with the recent disruption of established line-crack fracture concepts by the gap test documenting the strong effect of crack-parallel stresses. Fracture mechanics research will doubtless flourish for another century.
Labor Markets
Authors: El-Ganainy Asmaa , Ernst Ekkehard , Merola Rossana , Rogerson Richard , Schindler Martin
Published: January 2022

Labor earnings are the dominant income source for most individuals. Thus, an inclusive labor market is key for ensuring inclusive growth. In this chapter we propose four principles that an inclusive labor market will embody: access, fairness, protection and voice. While measuring inclusivity presents challenges, we discuss how data can be used to shed light on the extent of inclusivity and document cross-country trends and stylized facts. We also discuss the role of policy in achieving an inclusive labor market, focusing on the need to rebalance growth; improve risk sharing; and fight discrimination. Several messages emerge. First, some policies entail a trade-off between the different dimensions of inclusivity. Second, it is important to view policies as a bundle, taking into account substitution and complementarities. Third, some policies are win-win, in the sense that they both increase inclusivity and improve overall efficiency.
Competition and Innovation
Authors: Aghion Philippe , Cherif Reda , Hasanov Fuad
Published: January 2022

The chapter provides an overview of the theories and empirical evidence on the complex relationship among innovation, competition, and inclusive growth. Competition and innovation-led growth are critical to drive productivity gains and supports broad-based growth. However, new technologies and trends in market concentration are stifling future innovation while contributing to the marked increase in inequality. Beyond consumer welfare in a narrow market, competition policy should adapt to this new reality by considering the spillover and dynamic effects of market power, especially on firm entry, innovation and inequality. Innovation policies should tackle not only government failures but also market failures.
Trade
Authors: Bacchetta Marc , Cerra Valerie , Piermartini Roberta , Smeets Maarten
Published: January 2022

This chapter surveys the literature on the relationship between international trade and inclusive growth. It examines claims that the rise in inequality in many countries can be attributed to the concurrent rise in trade competition, especially from EMEs like China, spurring trade tensions and protectionist measures. The chapter investigates the conflicting literature showing the aggregate benefits of trade versus the adverse and persistent impact of trade, especially import competition, on specific industries and local communities. It then reviews the evidence for using trade policies and other complementary policies for adjustment and compensation to those groups adversely affected by trade.
Governance
Authors: Ivanyna Maksym , Salerno Andrea
Published: January 2022

The government’s ability to deliver inclusive growth crucially depends on the quality of governance. This chapter reviews the linkages between governance and inclusive growth, and key policies to improve governance. The policies include (1) structural reform, automation, improving rules and procedures (including for fiscal and monetary policies) to limit the discretion and hence the space for policy errors; (2) human resource policies, capacity building, effective anti-corruption frameworks to incentivize public officials to take decisions in the best public interest; and (3) transparency, accountability, and inclusive political institutions to inform and monitor policymaking.
Regional Disparities
Authors: Floerkemeier Holger , Spatafora Nikola , Venables Anthony
Published: January 2022

The chapter discusses regional disparities in economic performance and living standards. It first sets out some key facts and provide a conceptual framework to help analyze whether such disparities are efficient, or instead reflect market and/or policy failures. It examines whether policy attempts to reduce regional disparities necessarily involve a trade-off between equity and efficiency. The chapter then investigates whether policymakers should focus on boosting the economic performance of lagging regions—or, conversely, accept the presence of regional disparities, and instead assist households in lagging regions through transfer payments, investments in education, health, and other basic services, and by facilitating out-migration.
Generational Aspects of Inclusive Growth
Authors: Baduel Benedicte , Isakova Asel , Ter-Martirosyan Anna
Published: January 2022

Sharing economic benefits equitably across all segments of society includes addressing the specific challenges of different generations. At present, youth and elderly are particularly vulnerable to poverty relative to adults in their middle years. The chapter examines broad-based policies to foster youth integration into the labor market and ensure adequate income and health care support for the elderly. Turning to the intergenerational dimension, everyone should have the same chances in life, regardless of their family background. The chapter analyzes policies that promote social mobility, including improving access to high-quality care and education starting from a very early age, supporting lifelong learning, effective social protection schemes, and investing in infrastructure and other services to reduce spatial segregation.
Climate Change
Authors: Bhattacharya Amar , Ivanyna Maksym , Oman William , Stern Nicholas
Published: January 2022

Climate change is a major threat to the sustainability and inclusiveness of our societies. A just transition to a low-carbon economy is the only viable way forward. This chapter reviews the science of climate change and the socio-economic damages that it causes and could cause in the remainder of this century. It then outlines key policies for a successful transition: pricing carbon, aligning the financial system with climate objectives, boosting public spending on sustainable infrastructure, deploying low-carbon industrial and innovation policy, building resilience and adapting to the climatic changes that are coming, better measurement of well-being and sustainability, and crucially, making the transition fair by ensuring socially just outcomes.
Is There a Future for the Book?
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The chapter considers the recent idea of ‘the death of the book’, by which it is believed that the digital age spells the end of the book as a physical object. However, the history of the book has always been marked by changes in media, in which apocalyptic prophecies are made about the end of knowledge. The chapter uses Walter Benjamin on the concept of ‘aura’, and Freud on the ‘magic memory tablet’, to trace through a philosophical idea of the book as containing a sense both of power and of threat and danger. Different types of physical book in history (clay tablet, scroll, codex, printed book, e-book, smartphone) are compared in order to open up a question about how books are valued and also damaged, from ancient Babylon to the Holocaust, and to ask what the status of books is today and into the future.
The Making and Unmaking of Libraries
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The Nazi bonfires trace a history back to the Library of Alexandria as the model of destruction in antiquity. The story both of this collection and of how it came to an end are now legendary. These myths in turn are twofold: of the antipathy of Christianity and Islam, and of religion and secularity. The chapter demystifies this history to show how it tells us as much about the storytellers as the events in question. This leads to a parallel discussion of the libraries of European monasteries, their decline, and the myth of the ‘rediscovery of the classics’ (including Lucretius) by Poggio Bracciolini in the fifteenth century. The idea of the ‘classic’ is revealed as a political ideology, equally as questionable as the colonial and imperial designs of book-collection and knowledge retrieval.
Incombustible Heresy in the Age of Luther
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

What is the wider motivation for book-destruction, and what is the significance of rituals involving fire? The explicit model for the Nazi book-burnings in 1933 was the book-burning by Martin Luther at the Reformation in December 1520. Since this event is also saturated in mythology, the chapter examines in detail the processes that led up to it and its consequences. It is compared with other anti-heretical campaigns: the first known book-burning in history, in imperial China; the burning of the Talmud in Paris or of Avicenna in Isfahan; and persecutions of the medieval Manichaeans and Cathars. Writing emerges as the inalienable force of political and religious dissent, a source for the imagination which brings down vengeance in turn.
The Bondage of the Book
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

This chapter formulates a theory of writing in order to explain the historic acts of destruction. It uses Lévi-Strauss’s assimilation of writing with slavery to reconsider the place of writing in philosophy. At the heart of the discussion is Hegel’s ‘master–slave dialectic’, which is examined through his reading of Luther; Enlightenment theories of language in Rousseau and Kant; and the early history of slavery in the Americas. The Hegelian argument is then traced in twentieth-century psychoanalysis and literary theory, especially in Freud, Lacan, and Derrida, in order to investigate the book as the dialectical object of anxiety and liberation, power and violence. The chapter ends by positioning the mimetic promise of writing as lying at the dangerous heart of its mystery.
The Mystery of Arabic Script
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

This chapter marks a move into the religious context of the history of writing. It examines the central place of script in Islam: in religious terms, but also in art, architecture, and culture. It examines the idea of writing in the Qur’an, and the development of calligraphy over several centuries as a carrier of the sacred. Multiple examples of Islamic manuscript are analysed in both the Baghdadi and the Mamluk traditions. The chapter then discusses the figurative meaning of writing, especially in the design and composition of the Alhambra in Islamic Andalusia. Writing is discussed as a form of artistic ornament in its own right, and also as a concept at the heart of a Muslim sense of the holy, as evidenced in the mosque, and the mihrab within it, but also in secular buildings.
The Unnameable Hebrew God
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

This chapter begins with a discussion of the genizah, the place of disposal for holy books (and often other writing, too) in Jewish societies. This leads to an analysis of the extraordinary Taylor-Schechter collection in Cambridge, the largest survival of texts in medieval Hebrew. Why are Hebrew letters considered sacred objects in themselves? And how does this relate to the history of the tetragrammaton, the idea that God’s name should never be spoken or written down? The genealogy of Hebrew script (in synagogue scrolls and also in amulets and talismans) is examined in parallel with that of Arabic in Islam, leading to a more general discussion of the idea of writing as a place of unmentionable secrets, including within modern arguments about biography and privacy.
How the Alphabet Came to Greece from Africa
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

This chapter is centred on the origins of the modern alphabet in ancient Greece. It opens with a philosophical discussion of the account of the invention of writing in Plato’s Phaedrus. Plato attacks writing as the source of a pharmakon—a medicine that is also a poison. This is traced, as it is in Plato, back to hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. The history of their decipherment by Champollion in the Napoleonic period is introduced in order to initiate a discussion of the status of the alphabet as the iconic script of modernity. This story is examined both from the point of view of philology and mythology, as Greek adapted Phoenician forms of writing from northern Africa around the same time as the Homeric poems were being written. Why does the alphabet still signify such a powerful ideology?
The Characters of chinese
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The global argument of the book now moves eastward. It opens with Hangul, the innovative script invented in Korea. Korea is also the birthplace of moveable type, building on the longstanding Chinese tradition of woodblock printing. The chapter considers the extraordinary literary culture of the Korean court, which is then compared more briefly with the writing system and book history of Japan. The main part of the chapter is centred in China. The argument between ideogrammatic and phonetic interpretations of Shang characters leads to a discussion of Chinese as the most sophisticated as well as long-lasting writing system in the world. The place of calligraphy both in books and in monumental landscape settings is described in various imperial guises, before a conclusion places writing in the context of the Cultural Revolution (Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’) and the Beijing Olympics of 2008.
Books Under the Razor
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

This chapter returns to the territory of iconoclasm but via extraordinary examples of attacks on books—with a knife—called here ‘biblioclasm’. The first case study is of a book of Catholic ritual which is subjected to savage violence in seven different attacks. The second case study is an attack on an apparently secular book—a Second Folio of Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1632), where the whole of the play Measure for Measure is cut out with a razor by an English Jesuit in Spain. What do these cases tell us about an attitude to the contents of books, and of the human subjective realm felt to reside within them? The chapter considers questions of secularization and also theories in modern philosophy (such as Heidegger) of erasure.
The Book Incarnate
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The metaphor of the book as body is one of the oldest known, but is it a metaphor? Stories abound of books being punished as if they were human bodies, or alternatively of books acting as miraculous saviours in relation to human injury or death in war. While these cases reach back to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars of religion (and long before) they are also found in the twentieth century, in the First World War, from which prayer-books have survived with bullet holes. The chapter argues for a mimetic relationship between the book as container and its human owners. This is investigated finally via the Ragyndrudis Codex from the Carolingian era. It acts as a martyred book, in place of the saint, but it also suggests what Roland Barthes called ‘book-life’, the capacity of a book to frame human subjectivity.
Written on the Flesh
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The chapter discusses the widespread practice of using writing as form of body art. This begins with the modern example of the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, who transfers images of Persian and Islamic writing onto photographs of human subjects including herself. This opens out into a wide-ranging discussion of the history of the tattoo: its use as a stigma (and confusion with branding) in Jewish and early Christian culture; its reclamation in Japanese culture; and its ambiguous status in the anthropology of the Polynesian islands, from Captain Cook onwards. At stake is how far writing suggests internalization or externalization: this culminates in a discussion of the politics of inscription in the theoretical writings of Foucault, and in the history of the Inquisition up to the time of Goya.
Heresy and Modernity
Authors: Cummings Brian
Published: January 2022

The iconic case of book-burning in the late twentieth century is Salman Rushdie. The chapter begins by examining in detail the events of early 1989, and their ramifications for the history of censorship, blasphemy and ‘hate crime’. The case of Rushdie is then juxtaposed with the sixteenth-century persecution of the anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus, which had profound meaning in the Enlightenment arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau. What is at stake in the argument between Servetus and Calvin, and what does it tell us about the power of the idea of the written book in the emergence of modernity? The chapter argues against a simple model of secularization to posit instead a deeper meaning in the concept of heresy, still alive today. The chapter ends with a discussion of Stefan Zweig and Paul Celan, and the idea of the ‘shibboleth’ in language.
Conclusion
Authors: Christians Allison , van Apeldoorn Laurens
Published: January 2022

The conclusion gives an overview of the argument of the book and ends with an urgent call for action. The need to respond to moral claims upon the relatively affluent is urgent. It is unjust to remain complacent in the face of suffering from which those with the greatest resources financially benefit. Relatively affluent states should not continue to claim their own entitlements to wealth while denying the same to others that lack the ability to influence the relevant tax policy institutions and processes. The need for urgency is only confirmed, and the means for action furthered, by the ongoing efforts of the international community to redefine the international tax system to achieve more fairness among states. A reckoning with the parameters and implications of the entitlement principle and that of fair cooperation must be seen as an urgent priority in this process, lest the mistakes of the past continue into the future.
Introduction
Authors: Arthur Richard T. W.
Published: January 2022

Since the arguments in this book are premised on the general line of interpretation of Leibniz’s metaphysics that I proposed in Monads, Composition, and Force, I should briefly describe that at the outset. First, though, I need to provide a sketch of the main elements of Leibniz’s metaphysics of substance and force, and some of the problems of interpretation they present to commentators....
Historiography
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: January 2022

This chapter establishes the historiographical context for the book by selectively reviewing current scholarly debates about the extent of religious change and secularization in modern Britain. Since (surprisingly) historians have made limited contributions to this contested field for the period after c.1970, the focus is on describing and referencing the published work of four sociologists of religion (Steve Bruce, David Voas, Grace Davie, and Linda Woodhead) and two theologians (Robin Gill and David Goodhew). Although these six individuals by no means constitute an exhaustive list of active researchers, they neatly exemplify the spread of opinions and interpretations when it comes to secularization. Bruce (who has assumed the mantle, from Bryan Wilson, as advocate-in-chief of the classical formulation of the secularization thesis) sits at one end of the spectrum, while Goodhew (who veers, in some of his arguments, towards embracing desecularization or resacralization) is at the other.
Introduction
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 1 starts by noting that ours is a rich world with pockets of devastation. It notes the book’s different audiences, including philosophers, development economists, aid workers, Effective Altruists, students, and ordinary folks. It explains the book’s philosophical methodology, including its engagement with Peter Singer’s Pond Example, Angus Deaton’s worry that global aid often undermines government responsiveness, and the book’s focus on worries about aid. It discusses intuitions and innocence, and introduces terminology. Chapter 1 introduces Effective Altruism, with whose approach to global need the book engages, and it also overviews the book. Finally, Chapter 1 concludes by observing that while the author remains a strong aid proponent, it is now much less clear to him, than it once was, to whom aid should be directed, the form aid should take, and how to trade off between the complex, often competing, considerations relevant to being good in a world of need.
Singer’s Pond Example and Some Worries about Effective Altruism
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 3 discusses Peter Singer’s famous Pond Example, which helped inspire the Effective Altruism Movement. It shows that while most people’s intuitive reactions to Singer’s example are compatible with Effective Altruism, those intuitions are also compatible with pluralism, as opposed to monism. Furthermore, Chapter 3 offer several arguments and examples to show that we should, in fact, adopt a pluralistic approach to thinking about global poverty, rather than the narrow, monistic, “do the most good” approach of Effective Altruism. Chapter 3 suggests that in responding to the needy a truly decent person must be open to the full range of moral considerations relevant to the situation; among other things, this will involve being virtuous (heeding considerations of virtue) and acting rightly or permissibly (heeding considerations of deontology), as well as promoting as much good as one can (heeding considerations of utilitarianism).
Direct versus Indirect Aid
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 4 notes several possible disanalogies between saving a drowning child, in Peter Singer’s Pond Example, and giving to an international charity to ameliorate global poverty and aid the needy. These include whether those needing help are members of one’s own community (community membership), whether one’s aid requires the assistance of many intervening agents, and whether one is actually saving lives as opposed to helping to defray any of the legitimate costs incurred by aid agencies. Chapter 4 suggests that the last two factors, which are related to the issue of whether one is providing direct aid or indirect aid, may have a bearing on the nature of one’s obligation to aid someone in need.
The Dark Side of Humanity, Part III
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 7 argues that the case for aiding the needy (foreign aid) may depend partly on whether the needy are the victims of misfortune or social injustice. It notes that aid efforts may benefit the perpetrators of grave social injustices, incentivizing such injustices. It argues that the line between man-made and natural disasters is often blurry, and that aid efforts may benefit corrupt leaders whose policies contribute to hybrid natural/man-made disasters, thus encouraging such disastrous policies. These issues—related to the problems of perverse incentives, complicity, and dirty hands—raise both consequentialist and deontological concerns about aid efforts that support corrupt regimes, weakening the case for learning to live with external corruption to aid the needy. Chapter 7 also explores the chilling case of Goma, where aid aimed at relieving the Rwandan genocide went tragically awry; reminding us that the book’s considerations have real-world manifestations of great normative significance.
Tax by Design for the Netherlands
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren , Jacobs Bas
Published: January 2022

The Dutch tax system is in urgent need of reform, as acknowledged by a large number of official reports, none of which has been acted upon. The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic downturn, the energy transition to contain climate change, and the taxation of multinational enterprises all call for a more efficient, equitable, neutral, and transparent tax system. In this book, tax experts, from at home and abroad, offer their detailed views on directions for tax reform in the Netherlands. Following a brief overview of the Dutch tax system, this chapter reflects on the book’s main findings and provides recommendations for the taxation of capital income, the corporate income tax (its design and future in a global setting), the taxation of labour income, corrective taxation to deal with climate change and congestion, and the taxation of consumption, particularly financial services, and the use of excise duties.
Wealth and Inheritance Taxation
Authors: Bastani Spencer , Waldenstr Daniel
Published: January 2022

A brief overview of the theoretical and empirical research on wealth and inheritance taxation is offered, with special reference to the Nordic countries. Net wealth taxes have largely disappeared from OECD countries. However, estate and inheritance taxes are still employed in several countries, perhaps because inheritances are considered ‘windfalls’. The theoretical case for a wealth tax is weak if—a big if—capital income is taxed fully. Moreover, international capital mobility has limited the feasibility of taxing the very wealthy, which in turn has weakened the case for taxing the less wealthy. In addition, both net wealth and estate and inheritance taxes face political and economic difficulties in taxing small and family businesses.
Taxation of Digital Platforms
Authors: Koethenbuerger Marko
Published: January 2022

Tech giants such as Google and Facebook generate significant amounts of advertising income, which is mainly reported in low-tax countries. This has started a policy discussion about how to re-align the locations of value creation and taxation. The success of the business model of these digital platforms relies on the existence of indirect network effects, which are the prime reason why these platforms exist and generate advertising income. To account for these effects, conventional tax policy needs to be adjusted. This includes an adjusted concept of nexus, which should rely on the location of users because they generate the relevant indirect network effects. The recent European Union (EU) proposal of a digital service tax goes in this direction and constitutes a policy option for the Netherlands.
Formulary Methods in International Taxation
Authors: Mooij Ruud De , Hebous Shafik , Liu Li
Published: January 2022

Strains on the current international system for taxing multinational enterprises have become ever more evident. This has sparked a global debate on how to reform the international tax framework, with proposals including simplified formulary methods. The authors discuss the merits and challenges of methods of formula apportionment and residual profit allocation as the basis for a renewed international tax system. As an investment hub, the Netherlands would likely experience a significant reduction in corporate tax revenue from the adoption of formulary apportionment based on assets and payroll, but less if based on sales by destination. On the plus side, formulary methods hold the prospect of generating major simplification benefits. The Netherlands would lose less revenue under a system of residual profit allocation under which ‘routine profits’ (normal returns) are taxed on an arm’s length basis and ‘residual profits’ (rents) on a formulary basis.
An Exploration of Optimal Income Taxation in the Netherlands
Authors: Jongen Egbert
Published: January 2022

An empirical application of optimal-tax theory to the Netherlands is presented using state-of-the-art models and recent estimates of how the tax base responds to changes in the tax system. The results for optimal taxes are compared with the existing system. The main conclusions are that, although the optimal rate structure depends on the preferences for redistribution, it never is flat. Furthermore, effective marginal tax rates on middle incomes in the current system are relatively high compared with optimal tax rates, suggesting that the average tax burden on middle-income groups is low compared with low- and high-income groups. Finally, a higher top tax rate generates little, if any, additional government revenue.
Taxation and Part-Time Work
Authors: Boer Henk-Wim de , Peichl Andreas
Published: January 2022

With demographic change, ageing populations, and increasing demands on government revenues, many countries face growing pressure to increase employment and tax revenues. The Netherlands is no exception. However, it already has very high labour force participation rates. Yet, it is also a world leader with regard to part-time work. Moreover, hours worked are especially low for secondary earners. This suggests that there is scope to extend labour supply along the intensive margin, for example, by encouraging individuals and especially secondary earners to work more. Reducing the marginal tax rates of secondary earners further to increase full-time work is relatively ineffective. Individual work–leisure preferences, social preferences, the possibility to combine work with the care of children, and household production also play an important role in the decision to work part-time or full-time. More promising policy reforms focus on improving labour market entry after school and for women with young children, keeping older workers in the labour force, and increasing human capital investments in general.
Towards a New Tax Balance between Employees and Freelancers
Authors: Bovenberg Lans , Groot Ed
Published: January 2022

Of all OECD countries, the Netherlands has the most extensive tax benefits for the self-employed. The uneven tax treatment of employees and the self-employed causes undesirable effects, such as lower labour productivity, erosion of social security, and weakening of the negotiating power of labour. The tax privileges are partly due to the dual tax status of self-employed individuals: they are entitled to both the tax concessions for employees and those for entrepreneurs. However, proposals for restoring tax neutrality encounter wide political and social resistance. To break the political taboo on reform, the earned income-tax credit and the self-employed allowance should be converted into an employee’s tax credit and a self-employed tax credit, which gradually converge over time. This would reduce tax differentials and ultimately pave the way to greater symmetry in the tax treatment of employees and the self-employed.
Modernizing Value-Added Tax
Authors: Cnossen Sijbren
Published: January 2022

The Dutch value-added tax (VAT), mandatorily based on the harmonized European Union (EU) version, is anything but a modern consumption tax that taxes all goods and services at a uniform rate. As exemplified by an analysis of the tax base, some 60% of the base is exempted (i.e. not taxed on output but on inputs). This distorts input choices, stimulates inefficient self-supply, and unnecessarily complicates administration and compliance. The welfare costs of the exemptions can be estimated at one-half of 1% of gross domestic product (GDP). If agreement for reform at the EU level is not forthcoming, EU member states should be allowed to replace their defective VATs with a modern version. This would strengthen competitive conditions.
Introduction and Overview
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

As the title of this book suggests, there is a fundamental distinction at its heart. What there is is not exactly the same as what is in itself. What is in itself is included in what is. But not everything there is is a thing in itself....
Existence
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

The truth of claims of actuality, as discussed in Chapter 1, is constituted by agreement of representation with reality as regards states of affairs. The truth of claims of existence, as discussed in Chapter 2, is constituted by agreement of representation with reality as regards things. In Aristotelian terms, which still fit our ordinary languages, things exist if and only if, and when and only when, they have all their essential properties. Different kinds of things have different essential properties. Thus poems exist as long as they are sufficiently remembered or documented to have a chance of being recited, whereas the Soviet Union existed only so long as it was a functioning state. Existing is not synonymous with being. The most controversial claim of Chapter 2 is that there are things that do not ever exist. Fictitious characters are familiar examples. And without actually existing they can have important places in our lives. According to Ignazio Silone’s widow, for example, he was in love with the fictitious heroine of his posthumously published novel, Severina. In this chapter, and elsewhere in this book, it is argued, as a main thesis, that nonexistent objects’ being what they are consists merely and wholly in their being intentional objects of representations and intentional attitudes; they are merely intentional objects. That is not what they essentially are. It is what they actually are.
Reality and the Physical
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

Chapter 5 affirmed the intrinsic reality of our own conscious states and their properties. Chapter 6 asks, about all sorts of physical objects and states, whether they are intrinsically real, and if so, how. Section 6.1 of Chapter 6 traces the development, in modern science and philosophy since 1600 or so, of three schools of thought about the ontological status of physical objects and states, which are then examined more thoroughly in the three succeeding parts of the chapter. Section 6.2 is about physical realism, which ascribes intrinsic reality to physical objects and physical states without requiring any involvement of consciousness in them. That is contrary to arguments in section 5.5.2 of Chapter 5 of this book, and a fuller set of arguments for not doing it are given here. Section 6.3 is about idealism, in a version that regards bodies as merely intentional objects of representations or perceptions. It is an occasionalist theistic version according to which God causes us to have perceptions conforming to “laws of nature” that we are able to learn. Section 6.4 is about panpsychism, which, as defined here, holds that intrinsic reality belongs only to things that are conscious, or have at least something like consciousness. It is more friendly to physicalism than is idealism. Thus far, however, there is little prospect of its delivering a persuasive case for the “causal closure of the physical” so desired by physicalists.
Thisness
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

In T this chapter (section 8.1) looks at how, for any particular thing, its thisness is the property of being identical with that particular thing and distinct from all other particular things. A suchness is a universal, in that it can be possessed by more than one particular thing, and must be definable without reference to any particular thing. Section 8.2 is focused on one of the forms of Leibniz’s doctrine of the Identity of Indiscernibles—which can be defined as the thesis that no two distinct particular things can share all their suchnesses. That is precisely what one must argue against in arguing for the irreducibility of thisness to suchness. Section 8.3 reviews two strategies for arguing for that conclusion, and one for a contrary conclusion. To find a deeper account of the possibility of a plurality of qualitatively indiscernible individuals, section 8.4 turns to the ontology being developed in this book, according to which all facts depend on facts about things in themselves, which are concrete and particular. And that implies that abstract objects such as universals depend ontologically on concrete particular things in themselves, rather than the other way around. It is argued in section 8.5, however, that the largest importance of thisness for human life is epistemological, and that a very large proportion of our knowledge even of things that are not intrinsically real, involves knowledge of thisness—that is, of particular things as “this” or “that,” “you” or “me,” and so forth.
God and the Causal Unity of the World
Authors: Adams Robert Merrihew
Published: January 2022

What holds the universe together? Is its causal unity intrinsically real; and if so, how can that be? Section 10.1 of this chapter looks at how for the idealist version of an ontology of intrinsic reality (as envisaged in Chapter 6), the relevant relations are among conscious states and events; and there must be a single subject of all the causes and all the effects involved—in a word, God. Section 10.2 offers an occasionalist theory about the nature of the causal connection among those conscious states and events. Malebranche’s version of occasionalism is explored in detail and found, surprisingly, not to be deterministic with regard to the most fundamental choices between good and bad, though deterministic about everything else including the consequences of those choices. But the basic idea of occasional causation is compatible with complete causal determination of everything by God. Section 10.3 discusses the question whether one opts for a form of pantheism in saying what was said in section 10.1 about God’s single-subjecthood. The discussion surveys substantively related but interestingly diverse views on that and similar topics, and concludes that the most important key to the central issue is that (as argued in Chapter 9) the concept of person or self is a concept of social relations and meanings, and not just an ontological concept. I am a subject and owner of my experiences only; God is a subject and owner of all experience. I am responsible for some things, but God is responsible for everything. That can be called panentheism.
Introduction
Authors: Bates Alan , McGurk Brendan , Peretz George , Williams Jack
Published: January 2022

This chapter provides an overview of the Internal Act, its legislative process, aims and objectives, background, and the reaction generated by it. In particular, it explores devolution concerns and impacts. It examines: the history of the UK internal market over the past centuries; the UK’s membership of the EU and the role of the EU in providing a set of rules for the functioning of the internal market that obviated any need to address those issues during the devolution settlement; the creation and powers of the devolved administrations and legislatures; and the controversial reception of the Bill and its legislative history.
The Non-Discrimination Principle for Goods
Authors: Bates Alan , McGurk Brendan , Peretz George , Williams Jack
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the second of the two market access principles established in section 1 of the Act, namely the non-discrimination principle for goods (hereafter referred to in this chapter as ‘the non-discrimination principle’ or ‘the principle’). The relevant provisions in the Act for the non-discrimination principle are found in Part I at sections 5–9 and 14–16, with modifications for the purposes of Northern Ireland found in section 11. Exclusions from the non-discrimination principle are found in section 10 and Schedule 1 to the Act. This chapter answers six overarching questions. What is the non-discrimination principle? What are the conditions for its applicability? What ‘relevant requirements’ are covered by the principle? What are the differences between direct and indirect discrimination? When is the non-discrimination principle excluded? What effect does it have in practice?
Northern Ireland
Authors: Bates Alan , McGurk Brendan , Peretz George , Williams Jack
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the provisions in Part 5 of the Act, which seeks to accommodate the Ireland–Northern Ireland Protocol within the parameters of a United Kingdom-wide internal market. Part 5 contains sections 46–49 of the Act. In particular, it considers the fundamental tension within the Protocol that arises as a result of the fact that Northern Ireland will remain within the EU customs union and single market for goods—and subject to a raft of EU law for those purposes—at the same time as taking its place within the United Kingdom’s internal market and being subject to the new provisions of the Act for those purposes. This chapter explains how those tensions are resolved in domestic law through the provisions of the Act and sets out the modifications that have been need made to the market access principles in order to accommodate Northern Ireland’s unique position within the United Kingdom internal market following the end of the transition period.
Financial Assistance and Subsidies
Authors: Bates Alan , McGurk Brendan , Peretz George , Williams Jack
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines sections 50–53 of the Act, found in Parts 6 and 7 of the Act, concerning financial assistance and subsidy control. Sections 50 and 51 confer on Ministers of the UK government a wide power to provide financial assistance for a wide range of purposes across the United Kingdom. Sections 52 and 53 deal with the proposed new UK-wide subsidy regime. Both pairs of provisions gave rise to concern in Parliament and in the devolved administrations as to their implications for the powers of the devolved governments, given that the UK government will be able to spend widely on matters within devolved competence and that a UK-wide subsidy control regime will have significant impacts on the powers of the devolved administrations and legislatures.
Time and the Visual Imagination
Authors: Ismael Jenann
Published: January 2022

The visual imagination is one of our most powerful tools in helping us think through abstract problems in physics and it plays an especially prominent role in spacetime physics, but it is also behind some of the most trenchant misunderstandings about what physics tells us about the nature of time. This chapter is about the images of time coming out of physics and the philosophical confusions to which they give rise. By casting the viewer in the position of an imaginary point of view outside of time and portraying time as (one dimension of) a static block of events, these images lead to people to say that the relativistic conception of time has eliminated much of what is essential to time as we know it. I argue that this is a matter of being misled by the logic of an image. Where, in this picture, do we find change? Where is the passage of time? Where is the familiar flux of everyday life and the surge of process? I suggest that we find them on the inside. We recover the familiar flowing time of everyday sense by seeing how things look from the point of view of an inhabitant of the Universe whose life is extended in time.
Making the Veil of Ignorance Work
Authors: Inoue Akira , Zenkyo Masahiro , Sakamoto Haruya
Published: January 2022

This chapter purports to give empirical feedback on impartial reasoning to justice by using online survey experiments. More precisely, the study focuses on whether and how the different conceptions of the veil of ignorance and John Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium affect real people’s impartial reasoning to justice. The findings show that, while ordinary people support impartial reasoning to the difference principle (maximin), their endorsement of it echoes neither John Harsanyi’s nor Rawls’s reasoning. The results illuminate that findings in human psychology, such as the principles of loss aversion and “perceived luckiness,” cannot be dismissed for denoting the relevant impartial reasoning to justice.
Grounding the Beneficiary Pays Principle
Authors: Bazargan-Forward Saba
Published: January 2022

This chapter develops a novel foundation for the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). Suppose a wrongdoer wrongs a victim by compelling labor from her. The wrongdoer owes the victim compensation. Suppose a third party innocently benefits from that wrongdoing. By benefiting, he, in effect, adds to the value of the labor that the wrongdoer compelled from the victim. And by adding to the value of the victim’s labor, the beneficiary ipso facto increases the amount of non-consensual labor compelled from the victim. The beneficiary thus exacerbates the wrong that the wrongdoer committed. Since the victim is owed by way of compensation the value of the labor forcibly extracted from her, the beneficiary, by keeping the benefits, is responsible for increasing what the victim is owed by way of compensation. And this is just to say that the beneficiary has a compensatory duty toward the victim, which is what the BPP states.