We show that the first-order theory of structural subtyping of non-recursive types is decidable, as a consequence of a more general result on the decidability of term powers of decidable theories.
Let \Sigma be a language consisting of function symbols and let C (with a finite or infinite domain C) be an L-structure where L is a language consisting of relation symbols. We introduce the notion of \Sigma-term-power of the structure C, denoted P
\Sigma(C). The domain of P
\Sigma(C) is the set of \Sigma-terms over the set C. P
\Sigma(C) has one term algebra operation for each f \in \Sigma, and one relation for each r \in L defined by lifting operations of C to terms over C.
We extend quantifier elimination for term algebras and apply the Feferman-Vaught technique for quantifier elimination in products to obtain the following result. Let K be a family of L-structures and K
P the family of their \Sigma-term-powers. Then the validity of any closed formula F on K
P can be effectively reduced to the validity of some closed formula q(F) on K.
Our result implies the decidability of the first-order theory of structural subtyping of non-recursive types with co-variant constructors, and the construction generalizes to contravariant constructors as well.