Consumption and Cash-Flow Taxes in an International Setting

We model the effects of consumption-type taxes which differ according to the base and location of the tax. Our model incorporates a monopolist producing and selling in two countries with three sources of rent, each in a different location: a fixed factor (located with production), mobile managerial skill, and a monopoly mark-up (located with consumption). In the general case, we show that for national governments, there are tradeoffs in choosing between alternative taxes. In particular, a cash-flow tax on a source basis creates welfare-impairing distortions to production and consumption, but is incident on the owners of domestic production who may be non-resident. By contrast, a destination-based cash-flow tax does not distort behavior, but is incident only on domestic residents. In the alternative case of perfect competition, with the returns to the fixed factor accruing to domestic residents, the only distortion from the source-based tax is through the allocation of the mobile managerial skill. In this case, the sourcebased tax is also incident only on domestic residents, and is dominated by an equivalent tax on a destination basis, or by a sales tax.

Effective Hamiltonian for fermions in an optical lattice across Feshbach resonance

We derive the Hamiltonian for cold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice across a broad Feshbach resonance, taking into account of both multiband occupations and neighboring-site collisions. Under typical configurations, the resulting Hamiltonian can be dramatically simplified to an effective single-band model, which describes a new type of resonance between the local dressed molecules and the valence bond states of fermionic atoms at neighboring sites. On different sides of such a resonance, the effective Hamiltonian is reduced to either a t-J model for the fermionic atoms or an XXZ model for the dressed molecules. The parameters in these models are experimentally tunable in the full range, which allows for observation of various phase transitions.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Taxing Corporate Income

Following Meade (1978), we reconsider issues in the design of taxes on corporate income. We outline developments in economies and in economic thought over the last thirty years, and investigate how these developments should affect the design of taxes on corporate income. We consider a number of tax systems which have been proposed, distinguishing them in two main dimensions: the definition of what is to be taxed, and where it is to be taxed. We propose that a tax levied on economic rent accruing in the corporate sector, and on a destination basis, merits serious consideration. We discuss alternative approaches, including both R-based and R+F-based flow-of-funds taxes and an ACE allowance. It is the destination basis – with border adjustments for exports and imports – which primarily distinguishes our proposals from those of Meade (1978).

Domain Patterns in the Microwave-Induced Zero-Resistance State

It has been proposed that the microwave-induced ``zero-resistance'' phenomenon, observed in a GaAs two-dimensional electron system at low temperatures in moderate magnetic fields, results from a state with multiple domains, in which a large local electric field \bE(\br) is oriented in different directions. We explore here the questions of what may determine the domain arrangement in a given sample, what do the domains look like in representative cases, and what may be the consequences of domain-wall localization on the macroscopic dc conductance. We consider both effects of sample boundaries and effects of disorder, in a simple model, which has a constant Hall conductivity, and is characterized by a Lyapunov functional.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; submitted to a special issue of Journal of Statistical Physics, in honor of P. C. Hohenberg and J. S. Lange