Laffer curve A draft paper by Y. Hsing looking at the United States economy between 1959 and 1991 placed the revenue-maximizing average federal tax rate between 32.67% and 35.21%. A 1981 article published in the "Journal of Political Economy" presented a model integrating empirical data that indicated that the point of maximum tax revenue in Sweden in the 1970s would have been 70%. A 2011 paper by Trabandt and Uhlig published in the "Journal of Monetary Economics" estimated a 70% revenue maximizing rate, and predicted that the US and most European economies were on the left of the Laffer curve (in other
Optimal foraging theory items that an animal should carry back to its nesting site or the optimal size of a food item that an animal should feed on. Figure 1, shows an example of how an optimal decision rule could be determined from a graphical model. The curve represents the energy gain per cost (E) for adopting foraging strategy x. Energy gain per cost is the currency being optimized. The constraints of the system determine the shape of this curve. The optimal decision rule (x*) is the strategy for which the currency, energy gain per costs, is the greatest. Optimal foraging models can