We study how regional productivity differences and labor mobility shape optimal Mirrleesian tax-transfer schemes. When tax schedules are not allowed to differ across regions, productivity-enhancing ...inter-regional migration exerts a downward pressure on optimal marginal tax rates. When regionally differentiated taxation is allowed, marginal tax rates in high- (low-)productivity regions should be corrected downwards (upwards) relative to the benchmark without migration. Simulations of the productivity differences between metropolitan and other areas of the US indicate that migration affects the optimal tax-transfer schedule more strongly in the regionally differentiated rather than in the undifferentiated case.
Many people have flipped coins but few have stopped to ponder the statistical and physical intricacies of the process. In a preregistered study we collected \(350{,}757\) coin flips to test the ...counterintuitive prediction from a physics model of human coin tossing developed by Diaconis, Holmes, and Montgomery (DHM; 2007). The model asserts that when people flip an ordinary coin, it tends to land on the same side it started -- DHM estimated the probability of a same-side outcome to be about 51%. Our data lend strong support to this precise prediction: the coins landed on the same side more often than not, \(\text{Pr}(\text{same side}) = 0.508\), 95% credible interval (CI) \(0.506\), \(0.509\), \(\text{BF}_{\text{same-side bias}} = 2359\). Furthermore, the data revealed considerable between-people variation in the degree of this same-side bias. Our data also confirmed the generic prediction that when people flip an ordinary coin -- with the initial side-up randomly determined -- it is equally likely to land heads or tails: \(\text{Pr}(\text{heads}) = 0.500\), 95% CI \(0.498\), \(0.502\), \(\text{BF}_{\text{heads-tails bias}} = 0.182\). Furthermore, this lack of heads-tails bias does not appear to vary across coins. Additional exploratory analyses revealed that the within-people same-side bias decreased as more coins were flipped, an effect that is consistent with the possibility that practice makes people flip coins in a less wobbly fashion. Our data therefore provide strong evidence that when some (but not all) people flip a fair coin, it tends to land on the same side it started. Our data provide compelling statistical support for the DHM physics model of coin tossing.
We study how regional productivity differences and labor mobility shape optimal Mirrleesian tax-transfer schemes. When tax schedules are not allowed to differ across regions, productivity-enhancing ...inter-regional migration exerts a downward pressure on optimal marginal tax rates. When regionally differentiated taxation is allowed, marginal tax rates in high-(low-)productivity regions should be corrected downwards (upwards) relative to the benchmark without migration. Simulations of the productivity differences between metropolitan and other areas of the US indicate that migration affects the optimal tax-transfer schedule more strongly in the regionally differentiated rather than in the undifferentiated case.
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