Generalized Cash Flow Taxation

We show the unique form that must be taken by a tax system based entirely on realization accounting to implement a uniform capital income tax, or, equivalently, a uniform wealth tax. This system combines elements of an accrual based capital income tax and a traditional cash flow tax, having many of the attributes of the latter while still imposing a tax burden on marginal capital income. Like the traditional cash flow tax, this system may be integrated with a tax on labor income. We also show how such a tax can be supplemented with an optional accounting for a segregated subset of actively traded securities, subjected separately to mark-to-market taxation at the uniform capital income tax rate, to permit a fully graduated tax system applicable to labor income.

The Effects of Taxation on the Merger Decision

This paper presents estimates of the tax benefits generated by a sample of U.S. mergers and acquisitions involving two public corporations over the period 1968-83 and estimates a "marriage model" based on differences between these mergers and another sample of "pseudomergers" that did not occur to determine the impact of these tax benefits on the probability of two firms combining. Our findings reject the hypothesis that leverage played a large role in fostering these transactions, and that the tax losses and credits of acquired firms likewise exerted no impact on merger activity. Though the use of such benefits by acquiring firms to shield profits of other firms did increase the level of activity, the impact was quite small. On the whole, our results suggest that the changes in tax provisions with respect to mergers introduced by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 will have a small impact on U.S. mergers and acquisitions.

Generalized Cash Flow Taxation

We show the unique form that must be taken by a tax system based entirely on realization accounting to implement a uniform capital income tax, or, equivalently, a uniform wealth tax. This system combines elements of an accrual based capital income tax and a traditional cash flow tax, having many of the attributes of the latter while still imposing a tax burden on marginal capital income. Like the traditional cash flow tax, this system may be integrated with a tax on labor income. We also show how such a tax can be supplemented with an optional accounting for a segregated subset of actively traded securities, subjected separately to mark-to-market taxation at the uniform capital income tax rate, to permit a fully graduated tax system applicable to labor income.

Generalized Cash Flow Taxation

We show the unique form that must be taken by a tax system based entirely on realization accounting to implement a uniform capital income tax, or, equivalently, a uniform wealth tax. This system combines elements of an accrual based capital income tax and a traditional cashflow tax, having many of the attributes of the latter while still imposing a tax burden on marginal capital income. Like the traditional cash-flow tax, this system may be integrated with a tax on labor income. We also show how such a tax can be supplemented with an optional accounting for a segregated subset of actively traded securities, subjected separately to mark-to-market taxation at the uniform capital income tax rate, to permit a fully graduated tax system applicable to labor income.

The effectiveness of camphorated parachlorophenol, cresatin, eugenol and formocresol for the emergency pulpotomy prior to endodontic treatment

Thesis (M.Sc.D.)--Boston University, School of Graduate Dentistry, 1973. (Endodontics)Bibliography included.The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of a number of widely used endodontic medicaments for the emergency pulpotomy procedure. The medicaments used were: camphorated parachlorophenol, Cresatin, eugenol, and formocresol. Physiologic saline was used as a control. In some cases, the patient's saliva was used to determine the response of the pulp to contamination during the operative procedure. [TRUNCATED

Anybody home? Figural studies in architectural representation

Architectural figures are charged with the task of bringing an architectural drawing, rendering, or model to life. They speak to us in ways that other elements of a drawing cannot, or rarely ever do. This is their charge, their vitality, their animacy, which can turn without moment’s notice, from the opening of a projective narrative in the tune of an invitation to live, to the swallowing of this extradimensionality by the overdeterminations of scale, proportion, order. I don’t want to assume that architectural figures serve a completely transparent, banal, self-evident role in architectural representation — the trope of human-as-scale. Instead, I would like to try to read architectural figures as sites of an ineliminable expression, perhaps deliberate and perhaps unconscious, within a given project. Watching out for figures, listening for how they might already be speaking, requires that we take a moment to reflect on the life of the figure — on its various appearances and disappearances

How to Say Things with Formalisms

Recent attention to "self-consistent" (Rosser-style) systems raises anew the question of the proper interpretation of the Gödel Second Incompleteness Theorem and its effect on Hilbert's Program. The traditional rendering and consequence is defended with new arguments justifying the intensional correctness of the derivability conditions

Mechanisms for Social Influence

Throughout the thesis, I study mathematical models that can help explain the dependency of social phenomena in animals and humans on individual traits. The first chapter investigates consensus building in human groups through communication of individual preferences for a course of action. Individuals share and modify these preferences through speaker listener interactions. Personality traits, reputations, and social networks structures effect these modifications and eventually the group will reach a consensus. If there is variation in personality traits, the time to reach consensus is delayed. Reputation models are introduced and explored, finding that those who can best estimate the average initial preference and who have the best knowledge to what the optimal decision is for the group become the most reputable. If there is one individual, an informal leader, who is stubborn, persuasive, reputable, and socially connected then the time to reach consensus is reduced. The second chapter introduces a model for the emergence of play behavior in animals. An individual-based model is proposed where organisms compete for resources in the environment. Play is introduced as a frivolous behavior that increases energy use and the probability of dying. Simulations show that play behavior becomes fixed in the population and the time spent playing is maintained at a low rate in regardless of its costly nature. When play behavior is directly functional by increasing foraging ability, it evolves quickly and the time individuals spend playing increases, but eventually the population of players collapses and play disappears. Play acts as a spiteful behavior in that playing individuals suffer a direct cost to their fitness, but also results in players consuming more resources incurring a greater cost to other individuals in the population through reduced probability of successfully foraging