This note is a demonstration that, in the presence of overlapping generations and under standard conditions for a social welfare ordering (Pareto optimality, transitivity, independence), the only ordering consistent with utilitarianism for all people currently alive at any given point in time is...

The terms ‘grandfather clause’ and ‘grandfathering’ describe elements of a policy program in which existing participants in an activity are protected from the impact of regulations, restrictions or charges applied to new entrants. In this paper, the role of grandfathering in the design...

Effective climate policy requires global emissions of greenhouse gases to be cut drastically, which in energy sectors can be achieved by lower emissions supply technologies, greater energy use efficiency, and substitution in demand. For policy to be efficient requires fairly uniform, pervasive...

The aim of this paper is to restate the case for social democracy and to propose a policy agenda in response to the global financial crisis. The crisis is not a temporary aberration, to be followed by a return to the ‘normality’ of the late 20th century, dominated by the ideology of economic...

The extent to which cultural activities can generate social and economic benefits for Indigenous communities, and the way in which those benefits are shared within communities depends largely on the way in which the system of intellectual property rights handles Indigenous cultural products. The...

The central common feature of a number of recent technological developments (collectively referred to as Web 2.0) is collaborative production of content on an amateur basis, that is, for motives other than commercial reward. Amateur production of content generates significant external benefits...