This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. In contrast to much of the optimal...

We study the regulation of a firm with unknown demand and cost information. In contrast to previous studies, we assume demand is influenced by a quality choice, and the firm has private information about its quality capacity in addition to its cost. Under natural conditions, asymmetric...

This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. We show that optimal...

This note reexamines the single-profile approach to social-choice theory. If an alternative is interpreted as a social state of affairs or a history of the world, it can be argued that a multi-profile approach is inappropriate because the information profile is determined by the set of...

This paper, which is to be published as a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, provides an introduction to social-choice theory with interpersonal comparisons of well-being. We argue that the most promising route of escape from the negative conclusion of Arrow’s theorem is to...

In a simple finite-horizon overlapping-generations model where the government has the power to levy commodity taxes and to implement uniform lump-sum transfers, and individuals as well as the government can purchase units of a storable good in order to transfer resources from the present to the...

We show that the Hotelling-Lau elasticity of substitution, an extension of the Allen-Uzawa elasticity to allow for optimal output-quantity (or utility) responses to changes in factor prices, inherits all of the failings of the Allen-Uzawa elasticity identified by Blackorby and Russell [1989...

We solve a class of two-dimensional screening problems in which one dimension has the standard features, while the other dimension is impossible to exaggerate and enters the agent's utility only through the message but not the true type. Natural applications are procurement and regulation where...

We study the link between second-best production efficiency and the constraints on income distribution imposed by private ownership of firms in economies with Ramsey taxation. We review the result of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972], Mirrlees [1972], Hahn [1973], and Sadka [1977] about firm-specific...

This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. In contrast to much of the optimal...