Optimal Capital Income Taxation with Heterogeneous Firms

We study capital income taxation in a context where firms differ in productivity and, they decide whether to produce or not after comparing after-tax profits vis-`a-vis an outside alternative option. In our setup, the government taxes capital income, firms’ profits and labor income but does not tax the alternative outside option. In this context, taxation distorts the firms’ decisions to participate in production (extensive margin) as well as the investment decisions once they decide to produce (intensive margin). The key feature for the capital income tax being different from zero is the distortion in the extensive margin. When all firms choose to produce there is no such distortion and not taxing capital income is optimal. However, when some firms choose not to produce the optimal income tax rate is different from zero. The magnitude and sign of this tax depends on the sensibility of capital and labor demand to a change in the interest rate.

Corporate tax, firm destruction and capital stock accumulation: Evidence from Chilean plants

We investigate the impact of corporate taxation on capital stock. In the paper, we indicate that corporate taxation might not only distort the decision of each firm to invest but could also destroy firms. With this in mind, we estimate capital demand equations, correcting for self-selection in the decision to produce by using the Heckman-Lee method and its panel data counterpart (Kyriadizou method). We use Chilean plant-level data , which is a period with large variability in corporate taxation. We find that corporate taxation has a considerable impact on the creation-destruction of firms and in addition, it also has an important impact on the decision of how much to invest for firms that are already involved in production.Corporate taxation, capital stock

Considering the anchoring problem in robotic intelligent bin picking

Random Bin Picking means the selection by a robot of a particular item from a container (or bin) in which there are many items randomly distributed. Generalist robots and the Anchoring Problem should be considered if we want to provide a more general solution, since users want that it works with different type of items that are not known 'a priori'. Therefore, we are working on an approach in which robot learning and human-robot interaction are used to anchor control primitives and robot skills to objects and action symbols while the robot system is running, but we are limiting the scope to the packaging domain. In this paper we explain how to use our system to do anchoring in Robotic Bin Picking.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Optimal Taxation With Heterogeneous Firms

We study steady state optimal taxation in a context where firms differ in productivity and they decide whether to produce or not after comparing after-tax profits vis-à-vis an outside alternative option. The government taxes capital income, firms’ profits and labor income, but does not tax the alternative outside option. In this context, taxation might distort the firms’ decisions to participate in production (extensive margin) as well as their factor allocations once they decide to produce (intensive margin). We find that the government has incentives to subsidize costs to induce firms into production. The optimal capital income tax is negative while the corporate tax rate is positive and the sign of labor income tax is ambiguous.

Model Checker Execution Reports

Software model checking constitutes an undecidable problem and, as such, even an ideal tool will in some cases fail to give a conclusive answer. In practice, software model checkers fail often and usually do not provide any information on what was effectively checked. The purpose of this work is to provide a conceptual framing to extend software model checkers in a way that allows users to access information about incomplete checks. We characterize the information that model checkers themselves can provide, in terms of analyzed traces, i.e. sequences of statements, and safe cones, and present the notion of execution reports, which we also formalize. We instantiate these concepts for a family of techniques based on Abstract Reachability Trees and implement the approach using the software model checker CPAchecker. We evaluate our approach empirically and provide examples to illustrate the execution reports produced and the information that can be extracted

Structural and Energetic Characterization of the Ankyrin Repeat Protein Family

Ankyrin repeat containing proteins are one of the most abundant solenoid folds. Usually implicated in specific protein-protein interactions, these proteins are readily amenable for design, with promising biotechnological and biomedical applications. Studying repeat protein families presents technical challenges due to the high sequence divergence among the repeating units. We developed and applied a systematic method to consistently identify and annotate the structural repetitions over the members of the complete Ankyrin Repeat Protein Family, with increased sensitivity over previous studies. We statistically characterized the number of repeats, the folding of the repeat-arrays, their structural variations, insertions and deletions. An energetic analysis of the local frustration patterns reveal the basic features underlying fold stability and its relation to the functional binding regions. We found a strong linear correlation between the conservation of the energetic features in the repeat arrays and their sequence variations, and discuss new insights into the organization and function of these ubiquitous proteins.Fil: Parra, Rodrigo Gonzalo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Espada, Rocío. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Verstraete, Nina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Ferreiro, Diego Ulises. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentin

On Verifying Resource Contracts using Code Contracts

In this paper we present an approach to check resource consumption contracts using an off-the-shelf static analyzer. We propose a set of annotations to support resource usage specifications, in particular, dynamic memory consumption constraints. Since dynamic memory may be recycled by a memory manager, the consumption of this resource is not monotone. The specification language can express both memory consumption and lifetime properties in a modular fashion. We develop a proof-of-concept implementation by extending Code Contracts' specification language. To verify the correctness of these annotations we rely on the Code Contracts static verifier and a points-to analysis. We also briefly discuss possible extensions of our approach to deal with non-linear expressions.Comment: In Proceedings LAFM 2013, arXiv:1401.056