Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- Part I: Theory -- 2. Consumption: The Welfare of the Representative Consumer -- 3. Consumption: The Welfare of the Community -- 4. Consumption: The Productive Capacity of the Economy -- 5. Investment -- 6. Depreciation -- 7....

Through tax evasion, through the labour-leisure choice or in other ways, taxpayers reduce the tax base in response to an increase in the tax rate. The process is commonly-believed to generate a humped Laffer curve with a revenue-maximizing tax rate well short of 100%. That need not be so. In the...

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...

A utilitarian measure of economic growth combines changes in the distribution of income with changes in real income per person to show how much better off people are becoming over time. It is the rate of growth of the dollar value of average utility of income. As such , it is seen differently by...

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem is commonly understood to invoke a dictatorship that is somehow lurking within our voting arrangements. The theorem has been described as proving that “any constitution that respects transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives and unanimity is a...

Utilitarianism can be misplaced or ambiguous. As a prescription for individual behaviour, the injunction to seek the greatest good for the greatest number is misplaced because there remains a domain of life where, within the bounds of law and custom, one is free to act as selfishly or as...