Recognition of conflicts of interest between French Canadians in Quebec and English Canadians in the rest of Canada is a necessary first step in the evaluation of proposals from Quebec for the refrom of the Canadian constitution, as well as for the design of institutions for an entirely...

Important as it is for public policy, there is still no consensus about the size of the revenue-maximizing tax rate at the top of the Laffer curve. The purpose of this essay is not to supply a correct rate, but to identify difficulties in doing so. 1) Estimates of the revenue-maximizing tax rate...

Public decision-making by majority rule is open to the danger of exploitation of minorities by majorities. Since any majority can employ the vote to expropriate the corresponding minority, it would seem that there can be no electoral equilibrium allocation of income or transfers in a democratic...

Most people believe that education - especially elementary education - conveys a civic externality. Students are taught, not only to be productive but to be honest, upright, law abiding and loyal to their country. Education conveys benefits to society as a whole, over and above the benefit to...

Correctly or not, Ronald Coase is often credited with the doctrine that courts ought to adjudicate for efficiency, that "the value of production" should serve as the criterion for resolving disputes over the boundaries between property rights. The doctrine that courts ought to adjudicate for...

Few subjects in economics have been more exhaustively discussed than the relation between productivity and thrift in the determination of the rate of interest, yet leading authors continue to hold markedly divergent views. This issue might be brought into focus in the following paper by...

This paper talks about the empirical demand theory as described in the textbooks as well as the one estimated in econometric work. Thus, the argument of this paper is that the gulf between the theory of demand as described in textbooks and the procedure followed in estimating demand curves is...