This paper analyzes the effects of introducing a graduated minimum wage in a model with optimal income taxation in which a government seeks to maximize social welfare. It shows that the optimal graduated minimum wage increases social welfare by increasing the low-productivity workers'...

We introduce a framework of electoral competition in which voters have general preferences over candidates' characteristics and policies. Candidates' immutable characteristics (such as gender, race or previously committed policy positions) are exogenously differentiated, while candidates can...

Culture has attributes of a global public good that needs to be preserved for mankind as a whole. World Culture Certificates are proposed to efficiently preserve World Heritage. The community of nations has to agree on the Global Heritage List and how much each nation is to contribute to that...

We study the environmental and economic effects of public abatement in the presence of multiple stable steady-state ecological equilibria. Under shallow-lake dynamics (SLD), the isocline for the stock of pollution features two stable branches, a good and a bad one. Assuming that the ecology is...

In this paper, we challenge the conventional wisdom that due to the negative correlation between family size and earning ability, family size can be used as a 'tagging' device, and calls for subsidizing children (via child allowances) to enhance egalitarian objectives. We show that the case for...

The UNESCO World Heritage List contains the 900 most treasured sites of humanity's culture and landscapes. The World Heritage List is beneficial where heritage sites are undetected, disregarded by national decision-makers, not commercially exploitable, and where national financial resources,...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of introducing user fees for publicly provided excludable public goods into a model with consumption and income taxes. The setup is a neoclassical growth model where agents differ in earnings and second-best policy is chosen by a...

The paper develops an axiomatic framework for rational decision making. The von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms give rise to a richer risk attitude than that captured in the standard discounted expected utility model. I derive three models that permit a more comprehensive risk evaluation. These...

We propose that outcome utility and process utility can be distinguished and empirically measured. People gain procedural utility from participating in the political decision-making process itself, irrespective of the outcome. Nationals enjoy both outcome and process utility, while foreigners...

Over the past few years, there has been a steadily increasing interest on the part of economists in happiness research. We argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and that happiness research is able to contribute important...