We provide a general coalitional procedure that characterizes a family of rules for bankruptcy problems inspired by the Talmud.

This article studies a model of coalition formation for the joint production (and finance) of public projects, in which agents may belong to multiple coalitions. We show that, if projects are divisible, there always exists a stable (secession-proof) structure, i.e., a structure in which no...

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...

We explore in this paper the axiomatic approach to the problem of sharing the revenue from bundled pricing. We formalize two models for this problem on the grounds of two different informational bases. In both models, we provide axiomatic rationale for natural rules to solve the problem. We,...

Reliable empirical evidence about the effects of unemployment insurance benefits (UIB) on individuals’ labour market paths is crucial for designing appropriate labour market policies. In particular, medium and long-run effects of the UIB system can differ markedly from short-term impact when...

We introduce a new operator for general rationing problems in which, besides conflicting claims, individual baselines play an important role in the rationing process. The operator builds onto ideas of composition, which are not only frequent in rationing, but also in related problems such as...

In a recent paper, Thomson and Yeh [Operators for the adjudication of conflicting claims, Journal of Economic Theory 143 (2008) 177-198] introduced the concept of operators on the space of rules for the problem of adjudicating conflicting claims. They focussed on three operators in order to...

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...

In a model where individuals differ in both their health care needs and their lifestyle preferences, we study the fair provision of health care with fresh starts. Grounded on basic ethical principles, we axiomatically derive social preferences that allow us to make welfare assessments when...