The main purpose of this paper is to examine recent work in monopolistic competition theory concerned with the influence of fixed costs (no convexities) on Chamberlin’s (1951) welfare ‘ideal’ which distinguishes a trade-off between allocative efficiency and product diversity. Inefficiency...

Hartwick’s rule of investigating resource rents in an economy with producible capital and exhaustible resources becomes, in a general model of heterogeneous stocks, a rule whereby the total value of net investment (resource depletion counting negative) is equal to zero. It is shown that...

Most propositions on the gains from trade with many consumers consider only lump-sum transfers as redistributive tools. It is widely believed that nothing can be said unless such transfers are possible. In this note we show that such a belief, and the consequent pessimism concerning the...

The theory of large-scale entry into an industry is made complicated by its game-theoretic aspects. Even in the simplest case of one established firm facing one prospective entrant, there are some subtle strategic interactions. The established firm's pre-entry decisions can influence the...

This paper considers the possibility of collective action by the business community to counter corruption in the award of government licenses and contracts. The analogy is with contract enforcement institutions studied by economic historians and contract law scholars. The institution in this...

When there are collection lags in the tax system, inflation reduces the real revenues. This is often offered as an argument for less reliance on the inflation tax. But the optimal rates of other taxes should also be reconsidered in the light of collection lags. When this is done, the focus...