The paper explores how repeated revisions of consumption plans increase long-run utility. If agents value present anticipations of future consumption, some revisions may be viewed as a benign form of self-delusion. We consider a minimal generalization of the Samuelson discounted utility model to...

Interest in the emergence of a global middle class has resulted in a number of attempts to identify and enumerate who belongs to it . Current research provides wildly different estimates about the size and evolution of the global middle class because of a lack of consensus on appropriate...

Using newly comprehensive data and tools from the Global Consumption and Income Project or CGIP, covering most of the world and five decades, we present a portrait of the changing global distribution of consumption and income and discuss its implications for our understanding of inequality,...

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not suffer from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of...

In this paper we provide a formal analysis to evaluate the subtraction of defensive expenditures from GDP. We consider expenditures that are used to produce non- market goods as candidates for being subtracted from GDP. It will be demonstrated that income net such expenditures will account for...

This paper analyses the effects of a carbon tax on a small open petroleum producing economy, using an aggregate intertemporal general equilibrium model with differentiated products. The long run effects on welfare and capital accumulation of both a unilateral and an international carbon tax are...

This paper analyses the effects of so-called "green" tax reforms on a small, open economy producing an imperfect substitute for foreign goods, using an intertemporal general equilibrium model. The labour market is characterised by union wage setting, and a fixed exchange rate implies wage...

This paper analyses the non-environmental welfare costs of an environmental tax reform using a numerical intertemporal general equilibrium model for the Norwegian economy. The tax reform is revenue neutral such that an increase in the carbon tax rate is accompanied by a reduction in the payroll...

Economic models typically assume that individual wants are determined by forces exogenous to the economic system. Social psychology and consumer research, in contrast, support the view that the perceived benefits of consumption are strongly affected by endogenously determined social norms. This...

The working of the labour market is important for the total welfare effects of tax reforms. This paper analyses, by using a computable general equilibrium model for the Norwegian economy, how different assumptions about labour mobility between industries and wage formation influence the...