This paper investigates the drivers of support for market mechanisms (competition and optimizing behavior by agents). We elicit such attitudes using concrete and simplified situations where respondents face a tradeoff between an economically efficient situation and a pro-social objective. We...

In pure population problems, a single resource is to be distributed equally among theagents in a society, and the social planner chooses population size(s) and per-capita consumption(s) for each resource constraint and set of feasible population sizes within thedomain of the solution...

Should two-band income taxes be progressive given a general income distribution? Weprovide a negative answer under utilitarian and max-min welfare functions. While this resultclarifies some ambiguities in the literature, it does not rule out progressive taxes in general. Ifwe maximize total or...

Many economists and psychologists refuse the idea that behaviour could be based on any other motives than selfish and hedonistic ones, at least in the context of economy, mainly based on a methodological premise, not so often on empirical research. The corresponding image of man that is inherent...

Amartya Sen has advanced a number of distinct arguments against utilitarianism and 'utility'-based views more generally. One of these invokes various ways in which underdogs can 'adapt' and learn to live with their situations. Sen's argument is related to Jon Elster's discussion of 'adaptive...

This paper studies the design of optimal utilitarian mechanisms for an excludable public good. Excludability provides a basis for making people pay for admissions; the payments can be used for redistribution and/or funding. Whereas previous work assumed that admissions are governed by the...

Should two-band income taxes be progressive given a general income distribution? We provide a negative answer under utilitarian and max-min welfare functions. While this result clarifies some ambiguities in the literature, it does not rule out progressive taxes in general. If we maximize total...

The discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized for treating generations unequally. We propose an extended rank-discounted utilitarian (ERDU) criterion instead. The criterion amounts to discounted utilitarianism on non-decreasing streams, but it treats...