Domestic International Sales Corporations (DISCs): How They provide a Tax Incentive for Exports

This Note examines the logical and empirical validity of the reasons for the passage of the DISC legislation. Basically, the DISC legislation was prompted by the negative trade balance in 1971, a novel phenomenon in post-World War II United States. Providing a tax break on producers\u27 export income was viewed as a way of reducing trade deficits by stimulating exports. On its surface, using tax expenditures to reach this goal seems logical, or at least benign. But when one considers that the primary thrust of the legislation was to encourage small producers to enter the export market, the logic of using a statutory plan that is convoluted at best and baroque at worst is seriously flawed. After reviewing the legislative history of DISCs, this Note examines the basic mechanics of setting up and operating them. Next, selected aspects of the inner workings of these special corporations will be examined in detail, with particular attention paid to strategies for maximizing DISC benefits. In the final section, policy considerations will be considered in light of a conclusion: Despite the well-intentioned goals of DISC legislation, the DISC concept has been developed in an overly detailed statute, the complex wording of which threatens to obscure the whole purpose of DISCs. That the DISC provisions\u27 marginal impact on reducing trade deficits is so small compared to the compliance maze they create argues strongly for either their immediate repeal or their drastic simplification. While the rules are in effect, however, tax managers of companies with significant income from exports are foolish not to gain tax advantages with DISCs

Logical Truth in Plato

Editor\u27s note: After blind peer review, this paper was selected for reading at the University of Dayton\u27s 10th annual Philosophy Colloquium, held Feb. 27-28, 1981. In his works on the history of logic, I.M. Bochenski passes rather harsh judgment on Plato\u27s practical competence in logic. His earlier Ancient Formal Logic claims that the dialogues are so full of elementary blunders that the reading of them is almost intolerable to a logician. Some of the harshest censure has been removed from the later History of Formal Logic, but Bochenski still regards Plato as struggling inordinately hard to solve logical problems which we find quite elementary. Despite this, he regards Plato as having been the first thinker in history to formulate a clear idea of logic. Now, I think Bochenski is wrong on both counts. More precisely, I think his diagnoses of logical blunders in Plato will not stand up to close analysis: not because Plato is a better logician than Bochenski thinks — although a little can be said for that — but because the whole notion of a peculiarly logical blunder is simply not usable to any great extent in criticizing an author who lacked a clear-cut notion of logical truth. This, of course, suggests my second point: I do not think that Plato actually formulated a clear conception of logic, at least in any terms recognizable by Bochenski himself or most any other contemporary logician. Thus, I do not believe that Plato had the conceptual means available to distinguish logical truths from physical or (if the expression is not too troublesome) metaphysical truths of great generality. In defending my second claim, I shall appeal to a particular interpretation of Aristotle\u27s doctrine concerning the peculiarity (oikeiotes) of scientific principles. If, as is plausible, we suppose that one of Aristotle\u27s purposes in presenting this doctrine is to combat a certain Platonic picture of science or philosophy, we may gain some insight into the views of both men

Improved quantum metrology using quantum error-correction

We consider quantum metrology in noisy environments, where the effect of noise and decoherence limits the achievable gain in precision by quantum entanglement. We show that by using tools from quantum error-correction this limitation can be overcome. This is demonstrated in two scenarios, including a many-body Hamiltonian with single-qubit dephasing or depolarizing noise, and a single-body Hamiltonian with transversal noise. In both cases we show that Heisenberg scaling, and hence a quadratic improvement over the classical case, can be retained. Moreover, for the case of frequency estimation we find that the inclusion of error-correction allows, in certain instances, for a finite optimal interrogation time even in the asymptotic limit.Comment: Version 2 is the published version. Appendices contain Supplemental materia

Ultrafast WDM logic

Ultrafast all-optical logic gates that accept optical inputs in which wavelength designates bit position within the overall byte are proposed and demonstrated. Four-wave mixing is shown to provide a conditional test function that can be used to construct any multi-input logic gate. Polarization provides the logic state for each bit. Implementations that use semiconductor optical amplifiers as the four-wave mixing medium can be monolithic and compact

The Goodman-Nguyen Relation within Imprecise Probability Theory

The Goodman-Nguyen relation is a partial order generalising the implication (inclusion) relation to conditional events. As such, with precise probabilities it both induces an agreeing probability ordering and is a key tool in a certain common extension problem. Most previous work involving this relation is concerned with either conditional event algebras or precise probabilities. We investigate here its role within imprecise probability theory, first in the framework of conditional events and then proposing a generalisation of the Goodman-Nguyen relation to conditional gambles. It turns out that this relation induces an agreeing ordering on coherent or C-convex conditional imprecise previsions. In a standard inferential problem with conditional events, it lets us determine the natural extension, as well as an upper extension. With conditional gambles, it is useful in deriving a number of inferential inequalities.Comment: Published version: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0888613X1400101

Explaining enhanced logical consistency during decision making in autism

The emotional responses elicited by the way options are framed often results in lack of logical consistency in human decision making. In this study, we investigated subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a financial task in which the monetary prospects were presented as either loss or gain. We report both behavioral evidence that ASD subjects show a reduced susceptibility to the framing effect and psycho-physiological evidence that they fail to incorporate emotional context into the decision-making process. On this basis, we suggest that this insensitivity to contextual frame, although enhancing choice consistency in ASD, may also underpin core deficits in this disorder. These data highlight both benefits and costs arising from multiple decision processes in human cognition