Firms can use capital that they either purchase or lease, but these alternatives are treated differently for tax purposes. This paper derives the demand for leased capital as a function of tax parameters, and uses the model to estimate the responsiveness of leasing to the introduction of bonus depreciation in 2002, finding strong evidence that depreciation allowances influence leasing patterns....

This paper aims at investigating the heterogeneous characteristics among truck drivers in route choice preferences. A latent class model incorporating membership functions is employed to examine differences between segments of drivers. A stated choice experiment designed for identifying route choice behavior of truck drivers provides the data for model estimation. The effects of road pricing an...

This paper proposes a simple scheme designed to elicit and reward intensity of preferences in referenda: voters faced with a number of binary proposals are given one regular vote for each proposal plus an additional number of bonus votes to cast as desired. Decisions are taken according to the majority of votes cast. In our base case, where there is no systematic difference between proposals’ s...

Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) methods have proven powerful in planning for sequential decision-making problems such as Go and video games, but their performance can be poor when the planning depth and sampling trajectories are limited or when the rewards are sparse. We present an adaptation of PGRD (policy-gradient for rewarddesign) for learning a reward-bonus function to improve UCT (a MCTS a...

The tax regimes applied to couples in many countries including the US, France, and Germany imply either a marriage penalty or a marriage bonus. We study how they affect the decision to get married by considering two potential spouses who play a marriage proposal game. At the end of the game they may get married, live together without formal marriage, or split up. In this signaling game, proposi...

Abstract The primary purpose of this study is to explore the determinants CEO bonus compensation: examine bonuses and whether or not independent variables are associated with compensation. For purposes study, a sample 2,448 compensations across 1,622 firms from 1997 2002 was used test several hypotheses. dependent variable in model Bonus dollar value (cash non-cash) earned by named executive of...

This article examines the relation of contemplative exercises with enhancement of students' experience during neuroscience studies. Short contemplative exercises inspired by the Buddhist tradition of self-inquiry were introduced in an undergraduate neuroscience course for psychology students. At the start of the class, all students were asked to participate in short "personal brain investigatio...

The Drosophila fruitless (fru) gene encodes a set of putative transcription factors that promote male sexual behavior by controlling the development of sexually dimorphic neuronal circuitry. However, the mechanism whereby fru establishes the sexual fate of neurons remains enigmatic. Here, we show that Fru forms a complex with the transcriptional cofactor Bonus (Bon), which, in turn, recruits ei...