Showing 1 - 10 of 2,251
This paper examines the effects of upgrading product quality standards on product and professional labor-market equilibriums when both markets are regulated. The Japanese government revised the Building Standards Act in June 2007, requiring a stricter review process for admitting the plans of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009755328
Utilitarianism is the most prominent family of social welfare functions. We present three new axiomatic ….'s (1998) Expected Critical-Level Generalized Utilitarianism (ECLGU) is equivalent to a new axiom holding that it is better to … novel characterizations extend classic axiomatizations of utilitarianism from settings with either social risk or variable …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012583668
A long-standing challenge for welfare economics is to develop welfare criteria that can be applied to allocations with different population levels. Such a criterion is essential to resolve the optimal population problem, i.e., the tradeoff between population size and the welfare of each person...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012493350
This paper proposes a new mechanism linking trade and wage inequality in developing countries the quality-upgrading mechanism and investigates its empirical implications in panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants. In a model with heterogeneous plants and quality-differentiated goods, only the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003591494
A fat and a healthy good provide immediate gratification, and cause health costs or benefits in the long run, which are misperceived. Additionally, the fat good (healthy good) increases (decreases) health care costs by increasing (decreasing) the probability of suffering from a chronic disease...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011336980
Should two-band income taxes be progressive given a general income distribution? We provide a negative answer under utilitarian and max-min welfare functions. While this result clarifies some ambiguities in the literature, it does not rule out progressive taxes in general. If we maximize total...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003845516
By relaxing the common efficiency wage assumption of exogenous shirking detection probabilities, we demonstrate how standards and efficiency wages are related. In a more general setting where the probability of detection depends upon the equilibrium effort level of non-shirkers, we show that the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010488287
Markets are ubiquitous in our daily life and, despite many imperfections, they are a great source of human welfare. Nevertheless, there is a heated recent debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. In fact, competitive pressure on markets may create strong...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011518078
This chapter presents an economic approach to character and personality traits with an application to the study of virtue. Economists interpret psychological traits, including character traits and virtue, as strategies that shape responses to situations (actions) determined by underlying...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014279705
In this paper we aim to trace the roots of the ongoing economic mayhem and to unmask the chorus of the tragedy which plays on the world stage. The main thesis of our work is that, despite the triumphant rhetoric praising the merits of perfect competition, the global fields of the dysfunctional...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009524338