C. Y. Cyrus Chu

Are fines more efficient than imprisonment

Abstract It is well-established argument in economic analysis of criminal policy that, as far as crime deterrence is concerned, we should first use the fine to its maximum before supplementing it with an imprisonment term. We show in this paper that this orthodox belief is wrong. When there is a spectrum of crimes that can be chosen by potential criminals with different levels of wealth, as is the case in reality, we show that a combination of imprisonment and a less-than-maximum fine may be more efficient in crime deterrence.

Plea bargaining with the irs

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to propose a new evasion-counteracting policy and to prove its welfare-improving property. The new FATOTA policy allows a target group of businesses to choose between the following two options: paying a Fixed Amount of Taxes, thus exempting themselves from tax audits, or paying only the amount they choose to pay and subject to possible Tax Audits. It is shown that FATOTA is very similar to the plea bargaining system of the U.S. criminal proceedings, and our results can be treated as an extension of the Grossman-Katz analysis to the crime of tax evasion.

Famine, revolt, and the dynastic cycle

Historians have long noticed that population declines in ancient China often coincided with dynasty changes, and that most of these declines were the result of internecine wars which, in turn, were often initiated by famine or density pressure. Since the interactions between density pressure, internecine wars, and dynasty changes cannot be explained by the traditional age-specific density-dependent population structure, we propose to use a bandit/peasant/ruler occupation-specific population model to interpret the dynamic socio-economic transitions of ancient Chinese population, and provide econometric support to our model. We also highlight the rich dynamics of the composition of human population, a factor which was often neglected in previous research on general populations.

Vicarious liability under a negligence rule

The previous literature has shown that if the agent has limited assets, the vicarious liability law under a strict liability rule can effectively make the principal monitor her agent, and induce the agent to take more care, which thereby reduces the social cost. In practive the negligence rule still applies to many tort cases, and the principals monitoring evidence is often needed to prove the agents negligence. It is possible that the principal will conceal the monitoring evidence from the court in order to avoid the vicarious liability. In such a case the society has to occur higher investigation cost than otherwise. To save the investigation cost, the court may want to provide incentives to induce honest reports either by lowering the due care level, or by lowering the level of vicarious liability.

Demographic Transition, Family Structure, And Income Inequality

We treat each age-specific income-earning member of the family as an income source, and use the source-specific Gini decomposition approach as well as the Lorenz comparison approach to study the impact of the changing population age structure on family income inequality. Empirical analysis using Taiwanese data shows that the pattern of Gini coefficients is significantly affected by the above-mentioned age composition factor. The general implication is that for many developing countries which have recently gone through rapid demographic transition, family income inequality indexed may implicitly embody information as to the age-specific composition of family members, which is irrelevant to the general notion of inequality.

Explaining the optimality of U-shaped age-specific mortality.

Mortality is U-shaped with age for many species, declining from birth to sexual maturity, then rising in adulthood, sometimes with postreproductive survival. We show analytically why the optimal life history of a species with determinate growth is likely to have this shape. An organism allocates energy among somatic growth, fertility and maintenance/survival at each age. Adults may transfer energy to juveniles, who can then use more energy than they produce. Optimal juvenile mortality declines from birth to maturity, either to protect the increasingly valuable cumulative investments by adults in juveniles or to exploit the compounding effects of early investment in somatic growth, since early growth raises subsequent energy production, which in turn supports further growth. Optimal adult mortality rises after maturity as expected future reproduction declines as in Hamilton, but intergenerational transfers lead to postreproductive survival as in Lee. Here the Hamilton and transfer effects are divided by probabilities of survival in contrast to the fitness impact measures, which are relevant for mutation-selection balance. If energetic efficiency rises strongly with adult experience, then adult mortality could initially be flat or declining.

Age-distribution dynamics and aging indexes

I analyze the dynamics of the age distribution as some vital rates change. When the fertility or mortality rate declines, the age distribution often manifests a dynamic stochastic-dominance relationship. I also propose some alternative indexes for measuring population aging. These indexes are closely connected with the age-distribution dynamics and contain more refined information about the distribution of age among the old.

Coresidence With Husband’s Parents, Labor Supply, and Duration to First Birth

This article investigates the time to first birth, treating coresidence with husband’s parents and labor supply as endogenous and using representative data on Taiwanese married women born during 1933–1968. We use a full-information maximum likelihood estimator for a duration model with endogenous binary variables. Results controlling for endogeneity suggest that both coresidence and working are associated with a delay in childbearing, reversing the effect of coresidence on the timing of first birth but not that of working. Women in earlier cohorts tend to choose coresidency and not working, and an increasing number of women from later cohorts choose to do both or to work only.

Productivity, Investment in Infrastructure and Population Size: Formalizing the Theory of Ester Boserup

The popular hypothesis of increasing Retums in the new growth theory has an implication which has been inevitably related to population. The assumption of ‘learning by doing’, almost by definition, implies that productivity growth is an increasing function of the aggregate production activity, which in turn might be affected by the size of population. One version of the ‘human capital’ approach to growth assumes that the external effect in production depends on the total stock of human capital, which in turn leads to a positive relationship between population and technological growth. A third approach to modelling increasing Retums is to emphasize the ‘non-rivalry’ factor, normally referred to as ‘knowledge’, in the production technology. Some researchers (such as Romer, 1990) concentrate on the public accessibility of knowledge when it is used; others (such as Arrow, 1962) show that the per capita cost of creating knowledge is inversely related to the population size. In either case, a larger population size can support more publicly accessible knowledge, which is another kind of connection between technological growth and population.1

Population Density and Infrastructure Development

A model is proposed with the following features: (1) there is a publicly accessible transport technology, which is more advanced when there is more specialized labor in it; (2) a high population density facilitates the development of the transport technology; (3) an improved transport technology facilitates a finer division of labor, which in turn increases per capita income. These features are compatible with the phenomena of economic development described by Boserup in 1981. It is also shown that, provided the infrastructure sector can charge the users, and individuals are free to choose jobs, the competitive equilibrium will be Pareto-optimal. Copyright 1997 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd