Arthur Laffer While he was teaching at the USC Marshall School of Business, Laffer played a key role in writing California Proposition 13, the property-tax-cap initiative that inspired a tax revolt across the nation. In the mid-1980s, Laffer left to teach at Pepperdine University in nearby Malibu. Laffer remained on the faculty for several years. In 1986, Laffer was a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate—which he lost in the California primary to U.S. Congressman Ed Zschau who lost in the general election to the incumbent, Democrat Alan Cranston. Laffer identifies himself as a staunch fiscal conservative and libertarian.
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