This paper characterizes a novel class of welfare criteria for settings with endogenous population. The core innovation is to treat parents’ fertility preferences as ethically relevant, deferring to them on the quality--quantity trade-off under conditions of equality. The resulting family of...

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'...

Models of limited attention have the potential to become a new unifying paradigm that could replace the rational choice approach. In this paper, we test the limited attention hypothesis by enhancing attention using pharmacological substances. A total of 160 subjects participated in our...

We propose a method for cost-benefit analysis of public policies that identifies potential Pareto improvements when losers from a reform are compensated through income tax changes. Reforms are desirable when they decrease aggregate excess burden in commodity and labor markets. This condition is...

Women often find themselves in teams that hinder their productivity and earnings. We analyze the role of homophily and gender stereotypes in preferences for team formation and examine the effect of information on changing these preferences. We find that women are expected to perform better in...

We develop and test a theory of efficient international trade. Efficiency gains arise through lower trade costs faced by ‘trade specialists’, whose superiority over ‘common traders’ manifests itself through lower trade costs. To test our theory, we construct and deploy a novel dataset...

Why does inequality vary across societies? We advance the hypothesis that in a market economy, where earning differentials reflect variations in productive traits among individuals, a significant component of the differences in income inequality across societies can be attributed to...

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...

This paper embeds firm dynamics into the Neoclassical model and provides a simple framework to solve for the transitional dynamics of economies moving towards more selection. As in the Neoclassical model, markets are perfectly competitive, there is only one good and two production factors...

We compare reported job satisfaction with vignette evaluations of hypothetical jobs by using a British, Greek and Dutch data set, containing 95 randomly assigned vignettes. In order to test comparability of international data sets recently the method of anchoring vignettes has been introduced by...