Current proposals to replace the U.S. foreign tax credit with an exemption for the income of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies make timely a review of the basic analytics of taxation under the two systems. This brief note reviews the key relationships, highlighting some that are not always...

Since 1975, the earned income tax credit (EITC) has transformed from a small, obscure provision of the federal tax code into one of the largest programs in the U.S. social welfare system. Today, the EITC provides $47 billion in benefits each year to 24 million workers and their families. Bill...

A myth about the origins of money has long organized modern approaches to the medium. According to that creation story, money is the natural product of human exchange. It can be analogized to a commodity like silver that comes to hand out of the decentralized activity of trading or a convention...

Some of the most interesting discussions of cost-benefit analysis focus on exceptionally difficult problems, including catastrophic scenarios, “fat tails,” extreme uncertainty, intergenerational equity, and discounting over long time horizons. As it operates in the actual world of government...

In the United States, most sperm donations are anonymous. By contrast, many developed nations require sperm donors to be identified, typically requiring new sperm (and egg) donors to put identifying information into a registry that is made available to a donor-conceived child once they reach the...

Consumers in wealthy countries like the U.S. and Japan usually know what they want, and how to obtain it. In such markets, the sellers who thrive should tend to be those who offer consumers the level of safety they want -- no matter what the law might be. For the most part, U.S. data confirm...

This paper examines the case for Member States withdrawing from the euro area (using Greece and Italy as examples), focusing on the economic benefits to exit and the operational and legal obstacles to doing so. It concludes that withdrawal is preferable to solely restructuring debt that remains...

The financial crisis has generated a renewed interest in financial regulation as well as corporate governance more generally, among both academics and lawmakers. A large number of bills have been introduced in the Congress to address one or more aspects of corporate governance, including most...

The collapse of the credit markets revealed that information critical to assessing the quality of many mortgage backed securities was unavailable. When subprime losses began to mount in 2007 and 2008, analysts were unable to obtain information necessary to assess the performance characteristics...

Various arguments attempting to resurrect the single monopoly profit theory of tying have been made, but none are successful. The Seabright claim that it is supported by a lack of empirical proof fails because the single monopoly profit theory is an impossibility theory, and my recommended...