The difference between the two amounts was his bonus, a rich reward for the robust earnings made by the traders he oversaw in Merrill's mortgage business.
It was no socialist but Nigel Lawson who aligned the taxation of capital gains and higher incomes, because he understood that any difference between the two amounted to an invitation to executives to pay themselves in share options, rather than salaries.
This week it emerged that the EU is now China's biggest trading partner: in 2004, trade between the two amounted to almost €160 billion ($210 billion), an increase of 35% over 2003.
One idea would be to require that all public companies publish a chart each year showing the total annual income of its highest-paid executive and of a worker earning the median income, as well as the ratio between the two amounts.
The major determinant of the choices made by participants was the fairness of the offer, as those in which the difference between the two amounts was small were accepted more often than those in which the difference was large.
These results agree with several previous studies that have used the classic Ultimatum Game [3], which show that when the difference between the two amounts in the split is large, people have a higher tendency to reject the offer, even when this means that they will not make any money.
The reason for the lack of difference between the $3 and $5 conditions may be that the difference between the two amounts was too small to affect behavior.
We found that across age groups, reported consumption of fruits, vegetables, and dairy in California tended to exceed national averages, poultry was comparable, and reported meat consumption tended to be lower than national averages though percentage differences between the two amounts were usually less than ten percent (Additional file 4: Table S4).
The difference between these two amounts is then taxed from groups with below average costs and passed on as a subsidy to groups with greater than average costs.
Our analysis used two cost variables from MBS claims data: provider charge (the amount the provider charged for the service) and benefit paid (the benefit paid by Medicare to the claimant), and we defined out-of-pocket costs (OOPC) as the difference between these two amounts.
