This paper proposes an explanation for the universal human desire for increasing consumption and the associated propensity to trade survival opportunity off conspicuous consumption. I argue that this desire was moulded in evolutionary times by a mechanism known to biologists as sexual selection,...

This Paper studies the optimal education policy in the presence of different groups of households, with groups differing in the distribution of the ability to benefit from education. The main result is that the high ability individuals from groups with relatively few high ability individuals...

We study in this paper whether the price charged to a competitor for the use of an essential input produced in conditions of natural monopoly should reflect only considerations of relative efficiency between the various potential suppliers. In a model that captures the technological conditions...

The paper studies the optimal education policy of a budget-constrained utilitarian government. Households differ in their income and in the intellectual ability of their children; income is observed by the government, but ability is private information. Households can choose to use private...

This paper compares the organisation of the university sector under private provision with the structure which would be chosen by a welfare maximising government. It studies a general equilibrium model where universities carry out research and teach students. To attend university, and earn...

This paper uses the sequencing of privatisation to infer the objective pursued by the Polish government in the privatisation of its large manufacturing firms in the second half of the 1990's. We construct a model of mixed oligopoly, and use it to evaluate the privatisation process; our analysis...