We consider a new model of a local public goods economy with differentiated crowding in which we make a distinction between the tastes and crowding characteristics of agents. It is possible in this model to have taste-homogeneous jurisdictions that take advantage of the full array of positive...

In a range of settings, private firms manage peer effects by sorting agents into different groups, be they schools, neighbourhoods or teams. This paper considers such a firm, which controls group entry by setting a series of anonymous prices. We show that private provision systematically leads...

We consider a planner who chooses between two possible public policies and ask whether a referendum or a cost benefit analysis leads to higher welfare. We find that a referendum leads to higher welfare than a cost benefit analyses in "common value" environments. Cost benefit analysis is better...

The renown or infamy of Henry VIII's Great Debasement (1542 - 1553), which the government of his successor, Edward VI, continued for another six years after his death, has unfairly obscured his earlier and far more modest coinage changes and public-spirited monetary policies. Furthermore,...

Coinage debasement in medieval and early modern Europe remains an ill-understood topic; and indeed an often cited article ("The Debasement Puzzle": Velde and Weber, 1996) sought to demonstrate that coinage debasements were both impractical and economically futile. The purpose of this study is to...

This paper is a critique of Michael Postan's famous Malthusian-Ricardo model demonstrating that late-medieval prices and wages were essentially determined by demographic factors, especially after the Black Death, while contending that monetary factors played no role in determining prices or...

Coinage debasements were a prevalent and generally very harmful feature of most economies in late-medieval western Europe, and most certainly in Burgundian Flanders (1384-1482). Flanders also experienced several economic recessions or contractions from three related sources: warfare; the...

This paper seeks to answer two questions: were the coinage debasements in Burgundian Flanders (1384-1482) undertaken principally as monetary or fiscal policies; and were they beneficial or harmful? In a recent monograph, Sargent and Velde (Big Problem of Small Change: 2002) contend that monetary...

Why are some cities specialised and others diversified? What are the advantages and disadvantages of urban specialisation and diversity? To what extent does the structure of cities, and the activities of firms and people in them, change over time? How does the sectoral composition of cities...

A competitive economy is studied in which sellers offer alternative direct mechanisms to buyers who have correlated private information about their valuations. In contrast to the monopoly case where sellers charge entry fees and extract all buyers surplus, it is shown that in the \emph{unique}...