Random taxation may be optimal when the tax payers differ in their attitudes towards risk, so that tax randomization enables the government to separate agents who otherwise would have been pooled. The paper provides conditions under which randomization is optimal, both characterizing circumstances where local random deviations are improving in a neighborhood of a non random optimum, and giving ...

Nitric oxide (NO) in tumor microenvironment may have a significant impact on metastatic behaviors of cancer. Noncytotoxic doses of NO enhanced anoikis resistance and migration in lung cancer H23 cells via an increase in lamellipodia, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers including vimentin and snail, and caveolin-1 (Cav-1). However, the induction of EMT was found in Cav-1-knock down c...

Our continuing studies on secondary metabolites from the stem bark of Calophyllum soulattri has led to the isolation of another new diprenylated xanthone, phylattrin (1), in addition to five other xanthones and two common sterols. The xanthones are soulattrin (2), caloxanthone C (3), macluraxanthone (4), brasixanthone B (5) and trapezifolixanthone (6) while the sterols are stigmasterol (7) and ...

Investments in fiscal capacity—economic institutions for tax compliance—are an important feature of economic development. This paper develops a dynamic model to study the evolution of over time. We contrast a social planner’s investment path with politically feasible paths. Three types of states emerge in the long run: a commoninterest state where public resources are devoted to public goods, a...

This paper develops an endogenous growth model of a dual economy where human capital accumulation is the source of economic growth. The dualism between the rich individuals and the poor individuals exists in the mechanism of human capital accumulation. Rich individuals allocate labour time not only for their own production and knowledge accumulation but also to train the poor individuals. Stead...

In this paper, we consider a problem in environmental policy design by applying optimal stopping rules. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the optimal timings at which the government should adopt environmental policies to deal with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations and to reduce emissions of SO2 or CO2 under the continuous-time Knightian uncertainty. Furthermore, we analyze the ef...

A perceived advantage of cap-and-trade programs over more prescriptive environmental regulation is that enhanced compliance flexibility and cost effectiveness can make more stringent emissions reductions politically feasible. However, increased compliance flexibility can also result in an inequitable distribution of pollution. We investigate these issues in the context of Southern California’s ...

Many public goods are supported with both private and public funding. It is often argued that public funding, based on taxes, crowds out private philanthropic contributions. Agents respond to increases in taxes by decreasing their donations. However, the tax level depends on the political equilibrium arising from agents’ voting decisions. In this paper we analyze a variety of motivations for vo...

Taking advantage of the structure of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), we study the tradeoff between efficiency and equity associated with different levels of discretionary power when delegating regulatory authority to lower levels of government. Exploiting an instrumental variables approach, we provide evidence that the benefits of the 1990 CAAA were highly localized and accrued dispro...

This paper examines the sensitivity of inequality and poverty measures to the adult equivalence scale and the unit of analysis. Comparisons are made using parametric equivalence scales, and income units include individuals, equivalent adults and households. The role of the correlation between equivalent income and household size, and the weight attached to children, is examined analytically. Em...