We examine three measures of governmental policy: state gasoline taxes, the federal discount rate, and the prime of interest rate (which though set by banks is subject to political influence). All three variables show evidence of irrationality: they are not scale invariant (and thus violate...

This paper analyzes the idea that political opposition to a tax increases with two factors: 1) the amount of tax that would be owed if consumers did not reduce their consumption of the taxed good, and 2) the consumer surplus consumers would enjoy in the absence of the tax.

As a feature of positive redistribution, what incentive causes those with the power of transferring wealth to stop short of extremes in confiscationand even to a degree to serve the interests of the powerless and the wider soviety as a whole? A beginning approach to this problem has been made by...