The Chinese government has been active in trying to cool the alleged bubbles in its housing markets, especially in urban areas. This paper argues that the high housing prices are at least partly caused by some real factors, including the policy of restricting land uses, in particular the...

According to the principle of comparative advantage, the gender division of labor is utility enhancing during marriage. However, in the long term it decreases the earning power of the party who specializes in housework. Once the marriage is dissolved she/he will be the losing party and hence...

It is generally believed that the possibility of making interpersonal comparisons of utility levels (as required, e.g.,in applying the Rawlsian maximin criterion) does not require interpersonal comparison of utility differences (which involve cardinal utilities). Thus, if we are confined to...

Feldstein (1997) reviews his and others' contributions in the distortionary costs of taxation, arriving at a remarkable estimate that the cost per incremental dollar of government spending is a very high $2.65. Kaplow (1996) argues that it is optimal to supply a public good whenever the...

There are currently about two dozen Lorenz models available in the literature for fitting grouped income distribution data. A general method to construct parametric Lorenz models of the weighted product form is offered in this paper. First, a general result to describe the conditions for the...

A perfect-competition model is developed to analyze duality in specialization and technology such as in the men’s clothing industry, an industry with highly seasonal nature of the business cycle. We show that when the market fluctuation is large enough, some firms will specialize in one...

In this short paper, we investigate the behavior of the age-dependent value of a statistical life (VSL) within a lifecycle framework with a finite maximal possible lifespan. Some existing results, obtained under the unrealistic assumption of an infinite life expectancy, are reversed. In...

Though the various improvements and different measures of many aspects related to well being proposed by the Sarkozy Report will be very useful, an overall national success indicator to supplement/replace the traditional focus on GDP is needed. As an ultimate indicator, it has to be...