This paper uses computational techniques to assess whether or not various propositions that have been advanced as plausible in the literature on Customs Unions (or other regional trade agreements) may actually hold. The idea is to make probabilistic statements as to whether propositions of...

This paper seeks to contribute to discussion of the reasonableness of sometimes seemingly innocent assumptions used in theoretical trade models that the direction of trade is both predetermined for each good for each country and fixed. Here, we provide computational evidence as to the...

Country incentives to participate in cooperative arrangements which either fully or partially internalize climate change externalities from carbon emissions involve critical asymmetries. Small countries trade off own country costs of carbon mitigation actions against their own benefits from...

The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desidered over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes on issues that it deems most...

For most parameter values, increased randomness about how much taxable income an auditor would assess leads to higher reported income and more revenue, When reducing randomness is costly, optimality requires some randomness in assessed taxable Income. Even if reducing randomness g costless,...

One recurring issue in the debate over the estate tax is its impact on the non-profit sector. With the top marginal rate of federal estate tax currently at 49 percent, abolishing the tax would approximately double the price of a charitable bequest relative to an ordinary bequest for the...

This paper analyzes the Reagan Administratioris tax reform proposal in terms of its three stated objectives --fairness, simplicity, and economic growth -- and considers its likely effecton labor supply, saving and investment, and housing. The paper also attempts to place the tax reform debate in...

The hypothesis of this paper is that the performance and, in particular, the rate of capital accumulation of the post-war U.S. economy has been influenced by the changes in the public perception of the threat of a catastrophic nuclear war. An increased threat shortens the expected horizon of...

This paper offers an economics perspective on corporate tax noncompliance. It first reviews what is known about the extent and nature of corporate tax noncompliance and the resources devoted to enforcement. It then addresses the supply of corporate noncompliance -- the industrial organization of...

Extending the traditional treatment of the corporate tax to an economy with a progressive personal tax fundamentally changes the analysis. While the corporate tax system (CTS) does increase the total tax rate on corporate source income for some investors, the exclusion of retained earnings...