A basic median-voter model is developed and extended to analyze issues of economic regulation and public policy outcomes. The model is used to generate comparative static results relating changes in public-policy outcomes to changes in relative group sizes, total population, information costs,...

This paper provides a numerical illustration of how an international carbon treaty might work. The simulations in this paper using 2004 data on carbon emissions and per capita GDP from 178 countries suggest that high-income countries might be much better off collectively compensating low-income...

Perhaps the most serious ethical and political obstacle to converting an income tax to a consumption tax is that older persons who have accumulated wealth after paying income tax will be taxed again under the new consumption tax if they spend down their wealth. A crucial question that arises is...

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of whether computer source code is speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or whether it is merely functional, a "machine," designed to fulfill a set task and therefore bereft of protection. The answer to this...

It has been recognized that conversion of an income tax to a consumption tax can increase aggregate saving even if each household maintains a constant propensity to save. The reason is heterogeneity: the variation in the propensity to save among households. How much of an increase in saving is...

Is a tax rebate safe and effective? Simulations with an empirically-tested macro-econometric model are used to estimate the impact of the actual 2001 tax rebate in the U.S. and of a rebate twice as large repeated in three additional quarters, and the results of the simulations are interpreted in...

Two recent empirical studies of the 2001 recession published in the American Economic Review imply that an old-fashioned Keynesian fiscal stimulus—a cash transfer (“tax rebate”) or tax cut to households-- can overcome the zero interest-rate bound problem. We provide a quantitative estimate...