The fundamental problem of designing a wide scope general revenue tax can be reduced to the selection of the base used for administering the tax. Our current personal income tax is a hybrid version of a tax assessed on the basis of a tax unit's annual income receipts. An alternative to an...

Over the past decade economic activity in the United States has been extremely erratic. The economy has experienced high peaks and deep troughs in the business cycle. The first few years of 1970 were typically characterized by an economic recovery. The middle 1970's have been referred to as a...

Introduction In the last decade the problem of product liability has become one of the major concerns affecting industry, consumers and government. Product liability, which relates to the responsibility of a manufacturer to compensate a user who suffers injury from using his product, is not a...

The Council of Economic Advisers celebrated its thirtieth year in 1976. What has been its impact? Like most institutions the council has had periods of both increasing and waning influence during its existence. Let us summarize them briefly.

Increases in urbanization and mobility, as well as local government fiscal crises have altered the financing of local government expenditures. Intergovernmental transfer of funds has evolved as a major source of revenue for local government units. Intergovernmental transfers to subordinate...

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and test the relationship between market structure and profitability in the industrial sector of the U. S. economy. The majority of empirical studies testing this relationship have found a positive but weak correlation between concentration and...

One of the main theories which explains government intervention in the regulation of economic activities in the society is “Public Interest Theory.” This theory holds that regulation is required by the public for the correction of inefficient or inequitable market policies.

This paper presents a theory of the determinants of the methodology of economics. Following the useful distinction made by Papendreou (1958), theory is defined as comprising both a model and a probability statement as to the empirical validity of the model. Accordingly, first a model of the...

The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel program. In July of 1979, the President asked for an $88 billion “crash program” to encourage development of synthetic...

Between 1965 and 1973 the percentage of married women practicing contraception in the United States increased from 64.2 to 69.9. This increase was accompanied by changing social values, increased information, and important technological innovations. The major technological innovations were the...