Empirical welfare analyses often impose stringent parametric assumptions on individuals' preferences and neglect unobserved preference heterogeneity. In this paper, we develop a framework to conduct individual and social welfare analysis for discrete choice that does not suffer from these...

Normative-based distributional comparisons across countries and over time usually build upon the assumption that individuals are selfish. However, there is a consolidated evidence that individuals also care about what others have. In this paper we propose a framework for comparing and ranking...

This paper reexamines the design of the optimal lockdown strategy by paying attention to its robustness to the postulated social welfare criterion. We first characterize optimal lockdown under utilitarianism, and we show that this social criterion can, under some conditions, imply a COVID-19...

Slum upgrading programs are being used by national and city governments in many countries to improve the welfare of households living in slum and squatter settlements. These programs typically include a combination of improvements in neighborhood infrastructure, land tenure, and building...

We draw on the positive political theory and campaign finance literatures to examine how interest groups allocate influence activities (e.g., monetary donations, lobbying) across multiple government institutions when seeking more favorable agency policy decisions. By modeling agency behavior in...