Few subjects in economics have been more exhaustively discussed than the relation between productivity and thrift in the determination of the rate of interest, yet leading authors continue to hold markedly divergent views. This issue might be brought into focus in the following paper by...

This paper talks about the empirical demand theory as described in the textbooks as well as the one estimated in econometric work. Thus, the argument of this paper is that the gulf between the theory of demand as described in textbooks and the procedure followed in estimating demand curves is...

The liberal society might be supposed to have emerged directly from anarchy, spontaneously or in a social contract; or the liberal society might be supposed to have emerged indirectly by a roundabout process in which anarchy gave way in the first instance to despotism and then despotism gave way...

Public decision-making by majority rule is open to the danger of exploitation of minorities by majorities. Since any majority can employ the vote to expropriate the corresponding minority, it would seem that there can be no electoral equilibrium allocation of income or transfers in a democratic...

Most people believe that education - especially elementary education - conveys a civic externality. Students are taught, not only to be productive but to be honest, upright, law abiding and loyal to their country. Education conveys benefits to society as a whole, over and above the benefit to...

Recognition of conflicts of interest between French Canadians in Quebec and English Canadians in the rest of Canada is a necessary first step in the evaluation of proposals from Quebec for the refrom of the Canadian constitution, as well as for the design of institutions for an entirely...

Economists do not understand how bargains are struck. A bargain is the sharing of a pie between two or more people who are collectively entitled to the pie but cannot appropriate it until they agree how large each person's slice is to be. We know that people do strike bargains and that civilized...

The marginal cost of public funds is the equilibrium price at the intersection of the appropriately-defined demand curve for and the supply curve of public expenditure. In a world with identical people and with no excess burden of taxation, that price would have to be 1. Otherwise the median...

Citizen-candidate models of representative government postulate that any citizen may become a candidate for office, that a winner is chosen from among the candidates by voting with ties broken by the flip of a coin, that all voters have preferences among a set of policies and that the...

Disputes over the marginal cost of public funds may be about its magnitude in any given time and place or about its role in cost-benefit analysis. This paper is about the latter. The Samuelson rule was devised for an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent government. This paper is about how the...