This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

We consider taxation by a Leviathan government and by a utilitarian government in the presence of heterogeneous locations within a country, when migration from one country to another is and is not possible. In a closed economy, a utilitarian government may transfer income from the poor to the...

I analyze the effect of minimum wage hikes on housing rents, which is illuminating in understanding the desirability of minimum wages for two reasons. First, if the minimum wage increases housing rents, it unintentionally benefits homeowners rather than workers. Second, the rent is a sufficient...

We analyze the impact of trade-induced income shocks on the size of local government, and the provision of public services. Areas in the US with declining labor demand and incomes due to increasing import competition from China experience relative declines in housing prices and business...

We consider taxation by a Leviathan government and by a utilitarian government in the presence of heterogenous locations within a country, when migration from one country to another is and is not possible. In a closed economy, a utilitarian government may transfer income from the poor to the...

In theory, the informational advantage of decentralizing the eligibility criteria for a federal antipoverty program could come at a large cost to the program's performance in reaching the poor nationally. Whether this happens in practice depends on the size of the local-income effect on the...

We apply a monopoly trade union model and analyze employment, wage and budgetary effects of (i) an inflow of migrant workers and (ii) an increase in the labor market participation rate of migrants. Per assumption, natives and migrants solely differ with respect to the level of benefit claims in...

We apply a monopoly trade union model and analyze employment, wage and budgetary effects of (i) an inflow of migrant workers and (ii) an increase in the labor market participation rate of migrants. Per assumption, natives and migrants solely differ with respect to the level of benefit claims in...

In this paper we treat an individual's health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a minor technical matter; in fact, a continuous treatment of an individual's health sheds new...

The proposal involves the establishment of 'welfare accounts' for every person in a country. There are to be four accounts: a retirement account (covering pensions), an unemployment account (covering unemployment support), a human capital account (covering education and training), and a health...