I review the complex welare economic issues that arise in environmental decision-making over very long periods of time, as in the case of climate change, biodiversity loss and nuclear waste disposal. I also consider the questions that have to be resolved in choosing a discount rate to apply to...

This chapter examines the role of altruistic motives in the economic analysis of public social transfers, both from a positive and from a normative point of view. The positive question is to know whether we can fully neglect altruistic considerations to explain the development or sustainability...

This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

Behaviorally informed interventions include nudges, taxes, subsidies, bans, and mandates. In evaluating such interventions, policymakers should consider both their welfare effects (including, for example, their potentially negative effects on subjective well-being) and their effects on...

Allowing for the possibility that individuals may not always act in their best interest, what is the connection between choice and welfare? This paper addresses this concern by studying the normative implications of a general model of individual decision-making that allows for suboptimal...

If decision-makers (DMs) do not always do what is in their best interest, what do choices reveal about welfare? This paper shows how observed choices can reveal whether the DM is acting in her own best interest. We study a framework that relaxes rationality in a way that is common across a...

When individuals' utility is a convex combination of their income and their concern at having a low relative income (the weights attached to income and to the concern at having a low relative income sum up to one), the maximization of aggregate utility yields an equal income distribution. This...

We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and...

We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999, 2000) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household...

US states have implemented lockdown measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. We assess the impact of state policy responses on local economic and health conditions, with the goal to shed light on marginal health benefits and economic costs associated with social distancing. We find that...