Definitions of equivalence scales are usually based on a household utility function. This may be founded on an assumption of the household maximizing a welfare function of individual utilities. Basing inter-household comparisons of welfare on this approach is fallacious because households put...

Fractionalization has been shown to have a detrimental effect on growth, public goods provision, and redistribution. The conventional measure of fractionalization is the Herfindahl index, which calculates the probability that two persons drawn at random belong to different groups. This measure...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better informed than others. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political...

Are some individuals generally more pro-social than others? If so, socially beneficial commitments could serve as a costly screening device helping the pro-social to match. We present a public good game experiment in which subjects choose between two group types: in blue groups, subjects receive...

We report results from a dictator game experiment with nurse students and real estate broker students as dictators, and Amnesty International as the recipient. Although brokers contributed substantial amounts, nurses contributed significantly more, on average 76% of their endowment. In a second...