Public benefit-cost analysis of market policies often relies on a particular definition of market surplus that adds up consumer and producer surplus and external costs. This paper provides an overview of conceptual strategies to deal with moral considerations and then develops an adjusted market...

Participatory wealth rankings (PWRs) present an inclusive and inexpensive targeting method to identify poor households. They tend to be well received by participants but point to a systematically different understanding of welfare than implied by consumption-based rankings. This suggests that...

How much does a nation spend on resources to 'grease the wheels of trade'? To examine this question the Dutch economy is used as an exemplary case as the Netherlands are known as a nation of traders. This image was derived in the seventeenth century from successes in long distance trade,...

This paper argues that the introduction of a short-sale constraint in the Arrow-Radner frameworkinvalidates standard definitions of complete and incomplete markets. In this constrained set-up,two threshold values with familiar properties arise.The case of a zero short-sale bound set on some...

We apply theories of capital market failure to ana1yzeoptima1 financing of risky higher education. In the market solution,students can only finance their education through debt. There isunderinvestment in human capita1, because some students with socia1lyprofitable investments in human capita1...

We analyze the redistributional (dis)advantages of a minimum wage over income taxation in competitive labor markets, without imposing assumptions on the (in)efficiency of labor rationing. Compared to a distributionally equivalent tax change, a minimum-wage increase raises involuntary...