Your mobile device is a radio transmitter and receiver. It is designed not to exceed the limits for exposure to radio waves recommended by international guidelines. These guidelines were developed by independent scientific organization ICNIRP and include safety margins designed to assure the protection of all persons, regardless of age and health. The exposure guidelines for mobile devices employ a unit of measurement known as the Specific Absorption Rate, or SAR.
The SAR limit stated in the ICNIRP guidelines is 2.0 watts/kilogram (W/kg)* averaged over ten grams of tissue. Tests for SAR are conducted using standard operating positions with the device transmitting at its highest certified power level in all tested frequency bands. The actual SAR level of an operating device can be below the maximum value because the device is designed to use only the power required to reach the network.
In the last decade we have witnessed episodes of successful and unsuccessful speculative attacks on domestic currencies, especially in emerging economies. Interestingly, in some of these episodes we observed that these economies entered long recessions even when the attacks were unsuccessful and confidence was recovered swiftly. The aftermath of these episodes was generally characterized by financial distress, particularly for small firms (most of which are dependenton banks for financing investments).
There is a large body of literature indicating that the financial decisions of firms are systematically affected by company taxation (see Graham, 2003, for a comprehensive survey). Most importantly, interest on debt is deductible from the tax base, while the return on equity is not and, therefore, firms have an incentive to raise leverage above the optimal level without taxation.
The tax-induced advantage of debt increases with the statutory corporate tax rate, and it exists irrespective of whether a firm is owned by a domestic or a foreign shareholder. A multinational firm, however, is able to minimize its tax payments by allocating debt over all locations where it operates. The tax savings due to debt shifting depends on the differential between the parent and the host country statutory corporate tax rates. Accordingly, multinationals can reduce their tax payments by shifting debt from a low-tax jurisdiction to a high-tax jurisdiction taking advantage of the high-interest deduction in the high-tax jurisdiction (see, e.g., Mintz and Smart, 2004, for a theoretical analysis).
