Analyzing a proposal to ban state tax breaks to businesses

This article asks whether or not the overall welfare of U.S. residents would be greater if U.S. federal law prohibited state governments from offering tax breaks to particular businesses. The answer of a formal model is yes, making such tax breaks illegal could increase a summary measure of total welfare in the economy. According to the model, the policy could increase welfare because it would increase the tax revenue collected from capital agents, and that revenue could finance an increase in spending on public goods. The policy would also spread the tax burden more evenly in the economy and so reduce the deadweight loss of taxation per dollar collected. In addition, the policy would lead to a more efficient pattern of industry locations in the economy.State finance ; Taxation

Step-by-step migration to efficient agglomerations

Recent literature suggests that historical accidents can trap economies in inefficient equilibria. In a prototype model in the literature, there are two locations, the productive South and the unproductive North. By accident of history, the industry starts in the North. Because of agglomeration economies, the industry may reside in the North forever, an inefficient outcome. This paper modifies the standard model by assuming there is a continuum of locations between the North and the South. Productivity gradually increases as one moves South. There is a unique long-run equilibrium in this economy where all agents locate at the most productive locations.Industrial location

Geographic spillover of unionism

Unionism in the United States is contagious; it spills out of coal mines and steel mills into other establishments in the neighborhood, like hospitals and supermarkets. The geographic spillover of unionism is documented here using a newly constructed establishment level data on unionism that is rich in geographic detail. A strong connection is found between unionism of health care establishments today and proximity to unionized coal mines and steel mills from the 1950s.Collective bargaining

Bar codes lead to frequent deliveries and superstores

This paper explores the consequences of new information technologies, such as bar codes and computer-tracking of inventories, for the optimal organization of retail. The first result is that there is a complementarity between the new information technology and frequent deliveries. This is consistent with the recent move in the retail sector toward higher-frequency delivery schedules. The second result is that adoption of the new technology tends to increase store size. This is consistent with recent increases in store size and the success of the superstore model of retail organization.Technological innovations

Geographic Spillover of Unionism

Unionism in the United States is contagious; it spills out of coal mines and steel mills into other establishments in the neighborhood, like hospitals and supermarkets. The geographic spillover of unionism is documented here using a newly constructed establishment level data on unionism that is rich in geographic detail. A strong connection is found between unionism of health care establishments today and proximity to unionized coal mines and steel mills from the 1950s.

A combinatorial result with applications to self-interacting random walks

We give a series of combinatorial results that can be obtained from any two collections (both indexed by $\Z\times \N$) of left and right pointing arrows that satisfy some natural relationship. When applied to certain self-interacting random walk couplings, these allow us to reprove some known transience and recurrence results for some simple models. We also obtain new results for one-dimensional multi-excited random walks and for random walks in random environments in all dimensions