This paper reports an experimental study on three well-known solutions for problems of adjudicating conflicting claims: the constrained equal awards, the proportional, and the constrained equal losses rules. We first let subjects play three games designed such that the unique equilibrium...

We investigate how to extend bankruptcy rules to the more general setting in which agents' claims may refer to di erent issues. We consider two natural procedures and show that, among all bankruptcy rules, the proportional rule is the only one whose extensions according to the two procedures...

We consider allocation problems with indivisible goods when agents' preferences are single-peaked. We propose natural rules (called up methods) to solve such a class of problems. We analyzed the properties those methods satisfy and we provide a characterization of them. We also prove that these...

We consider allocation problems with indivisible goods when agents' preferences are single-peaked. In this paper we identify the family of efficient, fair and non-manipulable solutions. We refer to such a family as M-temporary satisfaction methods. Besides, we provide arguments to defend these...

We examine the effects of providing more accurate information to a political decision-maker who is lobbied by competing interests. Conventional wisdom holds that such a bias in the direction of the correct decision improves the efficiency of government. We provide a formal definition of bias...

This paper provides a discussion on the empirical findings surrounding the design of human development, inequality and poverty measures. We focus on the United Nations Development Program approach to those issues, in particular regarding the human development index and the multidimensional...

This paper is devoted to the discussion of the measurement of human development and poverty, especially in United Nations Development Program’s global Human Development Reports. We first outline the methodological evolution of different indices over the last two decades, focusing on the...

We explore the implications of four natural axioms in taxation: continuity (small changes in the data of a taxation problem should not lead to large changes in the tax allocation), equal treatment of equals (agents with the same pre-tax incomes pay equal taxes), consistency (the way in which a...

This paper provides an approach to poverty measurement that relies on the interpretation of poverty as a welfare loss. Our contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we analyse the relationship between individual and aggregate indicators, by introducing the notion of “distributive impact of...

In a recent article, Fragnelli and Gagliardo [Cooperative models for allocating an object, Economics Letters 117 (2012) 227-229] propose several procedures to solve a basic problem of fair allocation. We scrutinize their proposal and contextualize it into recent developments of the literature on...