This essay attempts to use the pure theory of welfare economics to address the ethical issues that underlie the choice of future population size. The essay begins with a summary of welfare economic theory as it pertains to situations where population size is not subject to choice, and notes that...

This essay presents a rigorous theory of involuntary unemployment in less developed countries based on the observation that at low consumption levels a person's overall ability to work is impaired. The theory links the incidence of involuntary unemployment in a market economy to the incidence of...

This paper takes an information-theoretic approach to the economics of science, extending Arrow's pioneering (1962) analysis of the allocation of resources for industrial research and invention. It addresses the questions: is there a valid economic distinction between scientific and...

In this article the authors explore, in a preliminary way, some of the effects of learning-by-doing on the structure, conduct and performance of an industry. Learning is seen as a decline in a firm's unit production cost as a consequence of an increase in its cumulative production experience....

A strand of recent literature shows that a reform of import tariff (export tax) and consumption tax (production tax) that keeps the consumer (producer) price unchanged enhances welfare and increases revenue under plausible conditions. It has been argued that the results provide an ex-post...

The current consensus on indirect tax reform in developing countries favors a reduction in trade taxes with an increase in VAT to raise revenue. The theoretical results on selective reform that underlie this consensus are, however, derived from partial models that ignore the existence of an...