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...

Since the pioneering study of Harberger, monopoly welfare loss has received much attention in the literature. However, no attempt has been made explicitly to incorporate oligopolistic interaction. In this paper we postulate a specific social welfare function and solve directly for the level of...

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...

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...

I consider transactions involving asymmetric prisoners dilemmas between pairs of players selected chosen from two large populations. Games are played repeatedly, but information about cheating is not adequate to sustain cooperation, and there is no official legal system of contract enforcement....