People not only care about outcomes; they also value the procedures that lead to the outcomes. Procedural utility is an important source of human well-being. This paper aims at introducing the concept of procedural utility into economics, and argues that it should be incorporated more widely...

The aim of this paper is to explain gift giving as due to a demand for social approval and status. In a simple framework we are able to account for a number of stylized facts. These are that gift giving is often reciprocal, that gifts tend to be inadequate, and that gift giving is sometimes...

"Men more easily renounce their interests than their tastes." (Rochefoucauld) Consistency and constancy are hallmarks of Odysseus' behavior with respect to the Sirens. The usual reading is that he is a general model of the way all self-control situations should be handled. The alternative...

This paper is a first step towards a positive theory of nonmajoritarian institutions. Delegation of powers to such institutions is best understood as a means of reducing certain political transaction costs. The precise nature of the relation between political sovereign and independent delegate...

I examine the connection between the discursive dilemma and corporate law. The discursive dilemma (or doctrinal paradox) is a distinctive social choice problem that was first identified by Kornhauser and Sager and later used as the basis for a theory of organizational personality by Pettit. I...

The analysis of economic institutions stands to gain from a consideration of the interactionist theory of institutions, a resource-based view of organizations to develop business and economic perspectives, and a linkage between the two and any theory of economic institutions. A resource-based...

Two theorems are presented that show the following: Assume that preferences are influenced by past consumption. If and only if preferences are adaptive, it is the case that all improvement sequences are acyclic and thus can be a basis for doing welfare economics. It is further argued that...

The measurement of preferences is an ongoing challenge for economists. New insights can be won by relying on reported subjective well-being in addition to observed behaviour. Empirical estimates of well-being functions, based on a sample of 5500 Swiss residents, find that unemployed persons are...

We investigate the incentives of environmental liability law to improve pollution control technology. It is shown that equilibrium choice of abatement technology and of the level of pollution reduction is socially optimal under very restrictive conditions. However, technological spillovers...

This paper analyzes a general-equilibrium model in which each person can choose to be either a producer or a predator. This model shows how predation breaks the link between the interpersonal distribution of productive resources and the inter-personal distribution of consumption. Specifically,...