This paper presents evidence on the consequences of the 1912 introduction of "quasiuniversal" male suffrage in Italy. The reform increased the electorate from slightly less than three million to 8,650,000 and left the electoral rules and the district boundaries unchanged. This allows us to...

A substantial literature examines second-best environmental policy, focusing particularly on how the Pigouvian directive that marginal taxes should equal marginal external harms needs to be modified in light of the preexisting distortion due to labor income taxation. Additional literature is...

This paper develops methodology for nonparametric estimation of apolarization measure due to Anderson (2004) and Anderson, Ge, and Leo(2006) based on kernel estimation techniques. We give the asymptoticdistribution theory of our estimator, which in some cases is nonstandard dueto a boundary...

Using a simple axiomatic structure we characterise two classes ofinequality indices - absolute and relative - that take into account "envy"in the income distribution. The concept of envy incorporated hereconcerns the distance of each person's income from his or herimmediately richer neighbour....