In the debate before passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, some political leaders proposed reducing the number of marginal tax brackets. In the end, the new law kept the same number of brackets as before (but with slightly lower marginal tax rates and boundaries for each bracket). How many many federal income tax brackets are there today and for the foreseeable future?

Which of the following statements is correct? a. two firms with identical sales and operating costs but with different amounts of debt and tax rates will have different operating incomes by definition. b. free cash flow (fcf) is, essentially, the cash flow that is available for interest and dividends after the company has made the investments in current and fixed assets that are necessary to sustain ongoing operations. c. retained earnings as reported on the balance sheet represent cash and, therefore, are available to distribute to stockholders as dividends or any other required cash payments to creditors and suppliers. d. if a firm is reporting its income in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, then its net income as reported on the income statement should be equal to its free cash flow. e. after-tax operating income is calculated as ebit(1 - t) + depreciation.

Explain whether each of the following events increases or decreases the money supply. a. the fed buys bonds in open-market operations. b. the fed reduces the reserve requirement. c. the fed increases the interest rate it pays on reserves. d. citibank repays a loan it had previously taken from the fed. e. after a rash of pickpocketing, people decide to hold less currency. f. fearful of bank runs, bankers decide to hold more excess reserves. g. the fomc increases its target for the federal funds rate.

Suppose life expectancy in years (l) is a function of two inputs, health expenditures (h) and nutrition expenditures (n) in hundreds of dollars per year. the production function is upper l equals ch superscript 0.40 baseline upper n superscript 0.60l=ch0.40n0.60. beginning with c = 1, a health input of $400400 per year (hequals=44) and a nutrition input of $400400 per year (nequals=44), show that the marginal product of health expenditures and the marginal product of nutrition expenditures are both decreasing. the marginal product of health expenditures when h goes from 44 to 55 is nothing, and the marginal product of health when h goes from 66 to 77 is nothing. (round your answers to three decimal places.)