When equivalence scales are used to compute the well-being of individuals, two possible weighting methods of the different household types have been proposed, the first one resorts to the family size and the second to the equivalence scale itself. The latter is criticized on the ground that it...

Properties of an average voting rule - the outcome being some weighted average of votes – are investigated, with particular attention to its ability to protect minorities. The unique average voting outcome is characterized with a median formula which depends on the voters’ preferred...

A student’s future log-wage is given by the sum of a skill premium and a random personal “ability” term. Students observe only a private, noisy signal of their ability, and universities can condition admission decisions on the results of noisy tests. We assume first that universities are...

To analyze equality of opportunity we examine the influence of family characteristics on the distribution of outcome for a given generation. Here, we study changes in equality of opportunity for income acquisition between 1977 and 1993, conditional on father's income level and income rank, using...

This paper assesses the extent and policy implications of simultaneous competition among countries on both corporate tax rates and the provision of public goods used by firms as production factors (‘public factors’). First, we derive the relevant theoretical results in a unified framework...

We investigate the problem of how to make welfare comparisons of income distributions hen a population allocation problem (how a population should be optimally divided over families for given resources) adds to the usual income allocation problem. Pro-family and anti-family stances are...

This paper provides a method to single out customer-based discrimination in the housing market. We build a matching model with ethnic externalities where landlords differ in the number of housing units they own within the same building. Multiple-dwelling landlords discriminate more often than...

We completely characterize the set of second-best optimal "menus" of student-loan contracts in a simple economy with risky labour-market outcomes, adverse selection, moral hazard and risk aversion. The model combines structured student loans and an elementary optimal income-tax problem à la...