Taxes, Elasticity, Revenue, and Economic Activity

Romer, Christina and David Romer, (2010). "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801.

tax increases to be highly contractionary with a negative effect on investment

Alesina, Alberto and Silvia Ardagna (2010) "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes versus Spending" In Jeffrey Brown, 2010. "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 24," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research.

Fiscal stimulis based on tax cuts increases the probability of future economic growth greater than spending


Carroll, Robert, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mark Rider, and Harvey Rosen (2000) "Income Taxes and Entrepreneurs Use of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, 18 (2), April pp. 324-55

Increases in marginal tax rates reduce the probability of future increased hiring and are associaed with reduced growth in wages.

Gruber, Jon and Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "The elasticity of taxable income: evidence and implications," Journal of Public Economics, vol. 84(1), pages 1-32.

Finds a very elastic response for incomes over $100k, (.57) with an elasticity of about .17 for incomes < $100k.

Gentry, William and Glenn Hubbard (2000) "Tax Policy and Entrepreneurial Entry" American Economic Review, vol. 90, pp. 283-287.

Finds a significant increase in entrepreneurial activity when tax rates are less progressive.

Djankov, Simeon, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, and Andrei Shleifer, (2010). "The Effect of Corporate Taxes on Investment and Entrepreneurship," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2(3), pages 31-64, July.American Economic Association.

"our estimates of the effective corporate tax rate have a large adverse impact on aggregate investment, FDI, and entrepreneurial activity"

The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1986 Tax Reform Act Martin Feldstein Journal of Political Economy
Vol. 103, No. 3 (Jun., 1995), pp. 551-572

Estimates the elasticity of taxable income to range from about 1.0 -3.

Lindsey, Lawrence B. 1987. "Individual Taxpayer Response to Taxcuts, 1982-1984." J. of Public Economics 33 (July) 173-206

Found elasticity of taxable income by income category to be .728 for income > $50k, 1.023 for >$100k, 1.413 for >$250k, and 2.0 for > $1 million. Also derived the tax revenue responses to reductions in marginal taxes for those earning more than $200k / yr. Revenues increased by 19% in 1982, 35% in 1983, 56% in 1984.

WHY DO EUROPEANS WORK (MUCH) LESS? IT IS TAXES AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Economic Inquiry, 2008, vol. 46, issue 2, pages 197-207

And

Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans?
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review
Vol. 28, No. 1, July 2004, pp. 2–13

Finds that taxes, and particularly higher marginal tax rates have a negative effect on labor hours.

Capitalism and Socialism

CAPITALISM:

“There are two ways for an individual to gain wealth: create it, or take it from someone else who has created it.  Capitalism is a way of organizing economic activity where individuals are free to create wealth, but not to take wealth by means of force or coercion.” ( From The WKU Center for the Study of Capitalism link)

SOCIALISM:

“generally involves the argument that economic production has an essential social as distinct from individual element, and this requires public investment and justifies a public share in and distribution of rewards.” from The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought (Oxford, 1987)   in Dictionary of Theories, Jenifer Bothamley Visible Ink Press,2002)

Two Patterns of Socialism: Communism and Fascism

“The Russian pattern of socialism is purely bureaucratic. All economic enterprises are departments of the government, like the administration of the army or the postal system. Every plant, shop, or farm stands in the same relation to the superior central organization as does a post office to the office of the postmaster general.”

 “The German pattern differs from the Russian one in that it (seemingly and nominally) maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs but only shop managers (Betriebsfiihrer). These shop managers do the buying and selling, pay the workers, contract debts, and pay interest and amortization.

There is no labor market; wages and salaries are fixed by the government. The government tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. The government decrees to whom and under what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds and where and at what wages laborers must work. Market exchange is only a sham. All the prices, wages, and interest rates are fixed by the central authority. They are prices, wages, and interest rates in appearance only; in reality they are merely determinations of quantity relations in the government's orders. The government, not the consumers, directs production. “

This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism. Some labels of capitalistic market economy are retained but they mean something entirely different from what they mean in a genuine market economy.”

(from OMNIPOTENT GOVERNMENT The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Ludwig von Mises, Yale University Press 1944 p56 link )

Three Myths About Capitalism

Business Card

Rent Seeking and Biotechnology

"Yet today we have only a handful of genetically modified crops, primarily soybeans, corn, canola and cotton. All are commodity crops mainly used for feed or fiber and all were developed by big biotech companies. Only big companies can muster the money necessary to navigate the regulatory thicket woven by the government's three oversight agencies: the E.P.A., the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/genetically-engineered-food-for-all.html?_r=3

Basic Concepts: Defining The Mean and Variance

"E[X] is the center of gravity (or centroid) of the unit mass that is determined by the density function of X. So the mean of X is a measure of where the values of the random variable X are" centered…. The variance of X will be a measure of the spread or dispersion of the density of X

" ---Mood, Alexander McFar1ane, INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF STATISTICS  1963.

“The variance of a distribution provides a measure of the spread or dispersion of the distribution about its mean. A small value of the variance indicates that the probability distribution is tightly concentrated around the mean (μ ); and a large value of the variance typically indicates that the probability distribution has a wide spread about the mean (μ )….the variance of X is the second central moment of X” – DeGroot & Schervish. Probability and Statistics 2002.

AgBiotech combating climate change « The Berkeley Blog

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/08/14/agbiotech-and-combating-climate-change/

Some teasers:

"GMOs in the US and in other countries, reduce significantly the use of rather toxic pesticide chemicals and there is evidence that they actually save significant amount of lives in India and China. "

"It is easy to show that if restrictions on the adoption of GMOs would have been removed and adoption rates of GM varieties in Europe would have been similar to the observed patterns of adoption, then much of the recent increase in commodity food prices would have been diminished. Introduction of GM varieties to wheat and rice would have further reduced commodity prices whereby helping the poor and would have released resources for other uses."

"The land use saving effect of GM varieties is estimated to have the equivalent effect of taking between 800,000-9 million passenger cars off of the road....The use of herbicide-tolerant varieties enable large scale adoption of low-tillage practices that sequester carbon and greenhouse gas sequestering effect is estimated to be equal to that of taking 6.4 million cars off the road."

"The heavy regulation of GMOs are unsound not only because of the loss of benefits from existing varieties, but because of the loss of potential benefits from newer applications of GMOs"