The evaluation of development processes and of public policies often involves comparisons of social states in which populations differ in size and longevity. This requires social evaluation principles to be sensitive to both the number and the length of lives. This paper explores the use of...

We consider the problem of regulating an economy with environmental pollution. We examine the distributional impact of the polluter-pays principle which requires that any agent compensates all other agents for the damages caused by his or her (pollution) emissions. With constant marginal damages...

In most welfare analyses, especially in the literature on normative inequality measurement, it is a commonplace to assume a direct relationship between the distribution of income and social welfare. As a result, this relationship is formally summarized by a single function, called a reduced-form...

This paper develops the link between poverty and inequality by focussing on a class of poverty indices (some of them well-known) which aggregate normative concerns for absolute and relative deprivation. The indices are distinguished by a parameter that captures the ethical sensitivity of poverty...

This essay examines the influence of a politician's party on her accountability to the electorate. It also considers what the conjectured waning of political parties may imply for the effectiveness of elections in disciplining politicians, and for voter welfare. The paper models the election...

We consider the problem of regulating an economy with environmental pollution. We examine the distributional impact of the polluter-pays principle which requires that any agent compensates all other agents for the damages caused by his or her (pollution) emissions. With constant marginal damages...

More and more economists and politicians are advocating the use of comprehensive measures of well-being, on top of the usual national accounting measures, to assess the welfare of populations. Researchers using subjective well-being data should be aware of the potential biasing effects of the...

This paper develops the link between poverty and inequality by focussing on a class of poverty indices (some of them well-known) which aggregate normative concerns for absolute and relative deprivation. The indices are distinguished by a parameter value that captures the ethical sensitivity of...

In a seminal contribution, Hansson (1976) demonstrates that the collection of decisive coalitions associated with an Arrovian social welfare function forms an ultrafilter. He goes on to show that if transitivity is weakened to quasi-transitivity as the coherence property imposed on a social...

In a seminal contribution, Hansson (1976) demonstrates that the collection of decisive coalitions associated with an Arrovian social welfare function forms an ultrafilter. He goes on to show that if transitivity is weakened to quasi-transitivity as the coherence property imposed on a social...