The paper gives a short overview of economic theories of justice and applies this to linguistic rights. Linguistic rights are defined in terms of status planning in specific domains. The point of departure is cost-benefit analysis which is extended in order to take account of distributional issues

We model self-control conflict as a stochastic struggle of an agent against a visceral influence, which impels the agent to act sub-optimally. The agent holds costly pre-commitment technology to avoid the conflict altogether and may decide whether to procure pre-commitment or to confront the...

This paper explores the problem of a social planner willing to improve the welfare of individuals who are unable to compare all available alternatives. The optimal decision trades off the individuals' desire for flexibility versus their aversion towards ambiguous choice situations. We introduce...

This paper analyses an overlapping generations model with absolute bequest motive. It is shown that the widely accepted criterion to verify dynamic efficiency does not apply to this case. In our model the social planner maximizes welfare by choosing a capital stock larger than the golden rule...

Do households' recycling efforts represent a social cost, which should be taken into account in cost-benefit analyses of alternative waste treatment systems.' Some argue that it should not, since recycling efforts are to a large extent voluntary. We demonstrate that if the government can...

This paper studies a model of public policy with heterogenous citizens/voters and two public goods: One (roads) is chosen directly by an elected policymaker, and the other (pollution) depends stochastically on the amount of roads. Both a one-country and a two-country version of the model are...

This paper models the welfare consequences of social fragmentation arising from technological advance. We start from the premise that technological progress falls primarily on market-traded commodities rather than prosocial relationships, since the latter intrinsically require the expenditure of...

This paper investigates the role of foreign competition and cost asymmetry in influencing privatization policy for domestic firms. With a mixed oligopoly model, we characterize and compare optimal privatization policy, and find that cost asymmetry and foreign competition interact in an...

Economic analysis often faces challenges in the valuation of non-market goods and services. The traditional set of non-market valuation tools for measuring Marshallian economic surplus has limitations related to potential bias in stated preferences and endogeneity of non-market amenity placement...

We develop a consistent and comprehensive theoretical framework for assessing whether economic growth is compatible with sustaining well-being over time. The framework focuses on whether a comprehensive measure of wealth – one that accounts for natural capital and human capital as well as...