This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

Subsidies and in-kind transfers give rise to negative fiscal externalities. However, internalizing negative fiscal externalities through taxation would undo the subsidy or in-kind transfer that caused them. Similarly, positive fiscal externalities cannot be internalized though government...

Joseph Stiglitz shared the Nobel Prize in 2001 partly on the basis of an important paper of his (with Greenwald): "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets." In that paper he says: "There exist government interventions (e.g., taxes and subsidies) that can make...

This paper illustrates the use of real options principles to value prototypical resource and industryinvestment projects. It captures important competitive/strategic dimensions in a step-by-stepanalysis of investment decisions (options) under uncertainty. It compares and contrasts...

Interventionism is known as a "necessary evil" in economic and social development, but may gain new dimensions in the current financial and economic crisis. In this context, the study aims at presenting concepts more or less the class of specialists, but today should be redefined. Value added of...

Interventionism is known as a "necessary evil" in economic and social development, but may gain new dimensions in the current financial and economic crisis. In this context, the study aims at presenting concepts more or less the class of specialists, but today should be redefined. Value added of...

We consider abstract social systems of private property, made of n individuals endowed with non-paternalistic interdependent preferences, who interact through exchanges on competitive markets and Pareto-efficient lumpsum transfers. The transfers follow from a distributive liberal social contract...

Federal and state governments often differ in the capacity to pre-commit to expenditure and tax policy. Whether the implied sequence of public decisions has any efficiency implications is the subject of this paper. We resort to a setting which contrary to most of the literature does not exhibit...

L’analisi economica dimostra che una risorsa scarsa deve essere impiegata nel rispetto del criterio di efficienza sia a livello allocativo che produttivo. L’approccio standard alla teoria economica mostra che la presenza di diritti di proprietà privata sulla risorsa scarsa in linea di...

Die vorliegende Studie wurde im Auftrag der Robert Bosch Stiftung im ifo Arbeitsbereich "Sozialpolitik und Arbeitsmärkte" erstellt und im Juni 2005 abgeschlossen, um die Arbeit der von der Bosch Stiftung initiierten Kommission "Familie und demographischer Wandel" zu unterstützen. Gegenstand...