Consumers are imperfectly informed. They do not know the characteristics of all the products in the market or the prices at which they are available at all sellers. There is no Walrasian auction ensuring that a particular commodity is sold at the same price by all stores. There is no Government...

This chapter presents a discussion on the economic organization, information, and development. The chapter sets out the basic tenets of the theory and contrasts these with some alternative hypotheses. The chapter also discusses the theory of rural organization that attempts to describe the...

For more than a hundred years, economists have attempted to show that progressive taxation can be justified on more fundamental principles. Among the earliest of such attempts was that of Edgeworth (1868, 1897), who tried to show that utilitarianism (combined with two other assumptions) implied...

As we understand it, the D.C. Circuit did not allow the EPA to consider the costs of complying with ozone and PM NAAQS. As we further understand it, this legal ruling can be overturned only by this Court. As economists, we believe that the D.C. Circuit's ruling not allowing the EPA to consider...

Three years ago, as America was preparing to go to war in Iraq, there were few discussions of the likely costs. When Larry Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser, suggested that they might reach $200 billion, there was a quick response from the White House: that number was a gross...

When Russia launched mass privatization, it was widely believed that it would create a powerful constituency for the rule of law. That didn't happen. We present a dynamic equilibrium model of the political demand for the rule of law and show that beneficiaries of mass privatization may fail to...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic and social development. Contrary to the view of those who believe in the existence of a tradeoff between democracy and growth, the paper contends that consensus-building, open dialog and the promotion of an active civil society are key...

This paper is concerned with delineating conditions under which public financial policies have no real and/or price effects. In the absence of intergenerational distribution effects, public financial policy is irrelevant:an increase in government debt (whether indexed or not), an exchange of...

We present some new ways of looking at economic systems. The aspect of human behavior which we emphasize is that individuals' judgments entail errors (they sometimes reject good projects and accept bad projects). The aspect of an economic system on which we focus is its architecture; that is, how...