In the problem of locating multiple public facilities studied by Barbera and Bevia [2, 3], we offer simple necessary and sufficient conditions for efficiency, decentralizability of efficient decisions in a game of community division and local public goods provision, and a constructive algorithm...

People not only care about outcomes, they also value the procedures which lead to the outcomes. Procedural utility is a potentially important source of human well-being. This paper aims at introducing the concept of procedural utility into economics, and argues that it should be incorporated...

In this paper we study the extent to which ethical social welfare orders on infinite utility streams can be continuous. For a class of metrics, we show that ethical preferences can be continuous if and only if the continuity requirement is in terms of a metric which satisfies a simplex...

The paper re-examines the foundations of representation of intertemporal preferences that satisfy intergenerational equity, and provides an axiomatic characterization of those social welfare relations, which are representable by the utilitarian ordering, in ranking consumption sequences which...

In this paper we provide a simple new version of Arrow’s impossibility theorem, in a world with only one preference profile. This theorem relies on a new assumption of preference diversity, and we explore alternative notions of preference diversity at length.

In order to enforce a collective choice to allocate resource to guarding against predators producers must subject themselves to the state's sovereign power to tax and to spend. But these sovereign powers in hand the state can exploit the producers by taxing and spending for its" own purposes....

In this paper I want to describe one way of thinking about information. In effect, this paper relates to the notion that organizational or societal models of economic equilibrium incorporate a decision-making mechanism that is influenced by the independent judgment of each individual. This...

We propose a new approach to the normative analysis of public-good provision in a large economy. Our analysis is based on a mechanism design approach that involves a requirement of coalition-proofness, as well as a requirement of robustness, so that the mechanism must not depend on specific...

This paper models the constitutional design process, and points out the importance of political communication (defined as the level of information about the social distribution of policy preferences that individuals hold, at the time of this process) on the "extent" of "democratic restraints" of...

This paper proposes and tests an empirical model of impartiality, inspired by Adam Smith (1759), that is based on the moral judgments of informed third parties (or spectators). The model predicts that spectatorship produces properties widely considered desirable in both the normative and...