This paper examines the change in welfare in Ireland over the 1987- 1994 period by investigating whether Lorenz and Generalised Lorenz dominance can be observed for household expenditure data. It also calculates bootstrapped standard error measures for Lorenz and Generalised Lorenz curves and...

Aftermarket social welfare is largely determined by a procurement auction design. Auctions select firms for operating aftermarkets, and auctions may also impose restrictions on aftermarket prices the winner can charge. This paper compares aftermarket social welfare generated by first-price and...

We develop an endogenous growth model with public consumption and infrastructure services provided by two-tier governments. Growth performance and welfare implication are compared under the centralized and decentralized fiscal federal systems. In general, there is a trade-off between welfare and...

This paper is concerned with the international mobility of New Zealanders who migrate to Australia. One in ten New Zealand citizens lives in Australia and their settlement and subsequent mobility is important from demographic, socio-economic and policy perspectives in both countries. Using a...

This thesis consists of three empirical chapters related to distributional outcomes, such as poverty and inequality, in three different contexts.Chapter 1 outlines a class of statistical procedures that permit testing of a broad range of multidimensional stochastic dominance hypotheses. We apply...

This thesis identifies the conditions under which and quantifies how much society gains from integrating demand response directly into wholesale electricity markets and the level of participation that will bring about these improvements. Furthermore, it identifies the conditions under which the...

We develop a social network model of occupational segregation between different social groups, generated by the existence of positive inbreeding bias among individuals from the same group. If network referrals are important for job search, then expected homophily in the contact network structure...

We study the ability of banks and merchants to influence the consumer's payment instrument choice. Consumers participate in payment card networks to insure themselves against three types of shocks

This paper derives a basic formula for the measure of social welfare, a second order approximation to the difference of the value of the Bergson-Samuelson social welfare function between the socially optimal resource allocation and the one in the present suboptimal economy. We discuss pros and...

This paper studies the relationship between horizontal product differentiation and the welfare effects of third-degree price discrimination in oligopoly. By deriving linear demand from a representative consumer's utility and focusing on the symmetric equilibrium of a pricing game, we...