Relative Responsiveness of Bargaining Solutions to Changes in Status-quo Payoffs

It is a well-known fact that several prominent bargaining solutions are responsive to changes in status-quo (i.e., disagreement or fallback) payoffs. When an agent’s status-quo payoff increases, his solution payoff either stays the same or increases. A fully general result for these solutions’ status-quo point ranking is impossible to establish. In this paper, using an important class of bargaining problems, a ranking of the relative status-quo point responsiveness of prominent bargaining solutions is obtained. Using the Constant Elasticity of Substitution class of bargaining problems, regardless of the concavity of the Pareto frontier and the level of increase in one’s status-quo payoff, we find the equal gains solution is the most responsive with respect to changes in status-quo payoffs, followed by the Nash solution. The equal sacrifice solutions is the least responsive, followed by the Kalai/Smorodinsky solution.

The Distribution and Redistribution of Opportunity

Recent theories of distributive justice focus on individual opportunities as the appropriate standard for distributive judgements. To translate this philosophical view into concrete public policy, three branches of economic literature have arisen, which we draw together here and critically assess. These concern ( i ) the measurement of individuals' opportunity sets, ( ii ) the measurement of the degree of inequality present in a distribution of opportunities, and ( iii ) the design of redistribution mechanisms intended to increase the degree of 'opportunity equality'. The purpose of the exposition is to unify the three themes, to give a flavour in non‐technical terms of what is going on in these very active literatures, and to indicate areas which remain open for research.     

Floating Maximally Many Boats: A Preference for the Broad Distribution of Market Benefits

Market economics can overreach and reduce all human activities to market-governed activities. More than a market-inspired explanation for human activities, it offers a normative account of how all goods and services should be distributed by private parties negotiating mutually agreeable terms. This paper argues that market values and practices are constrained by other fundamental values and practices. Liberal values are generally consistent with, though they are not reducible to, market values. Democratic and egalitarian values often contrast with market values. The distribution of market benefits should accommodate those democratic and egalitarian values which constitute a polity's core commitments (and those core commitments need to be reasserted regularly). Indeed, market stability depends upon a general distribution of its benefits. Incentives to productive activity entail inequalities, but the terms of those inequalities are subject to review. Internal refinements to specific markets can reduce inequalities by promoting the fairness of market operations and by increasing the number of effective participants.     

杜甫“万役但平均”的货币思想

杜甫所见,对比分明,或条条"路有冻死骨",或"朱门酒肉臭","左相(却)日兴费万钱"。他在深刻揭露如此巨大差距的残酷现实时,苦心寻找解决的办法,提出了"万役但平均"的思想和措施。本文用杜甫诗文所写的事实,从徭役、赋税、住房和货币分配等方面分析了杜甫"平均"主义货币思想产生的历史的、社会的和自身的原因,并指出其思想既有关心人民疾苦的进步性,又有历史条件的局限性。     

On the Market for Principles of Economics Textbooks: Innovation and Product Differentiation

Tabular data are provided on the journals that have published economic education articles, the topics covered, and the individual authors. Institutions are ranked by their contributions to the economic education literature.     

Inadequate Bivariate Measures of Health Inequality: The Impact of Income Distribution*

Bivariate measures of health inequality are influenced by changes in two variables: health and a socioeconomic variable, such as income. For these measures, what is reported as an increase in health inequality might just as well be a reduction in income inequality. In particular, several papers have found that socioeconomic health inequalities in Nordic countries are no less than in other European countries. The correct interpretation could just be that income inequality is no higher in Nordic countries than in the rest of Europe. The problem is especially profound when the causality is running from health to income.     

The Nature of Constitutions

Following Thomas Hobbes, public-choice economists have theorized that constitutions arise from agreements among subordinates to establish private rules for their own transactions with each other. They then supposedly delegate to a sovereign the obligation to enforce these rules. The sovereign then violates the constitution by instituting wrong-headed rules to govern the subordinates' relations with each other. Instead, it seems more realistic to see constitutions as arising from subordinates' agreements with each other to resist excessive appropriations by the sovereign. An advanced constitution is a substitute for this original type of agreement, which only works well when the subordinates' numbers are small, as in some hunter-gatherer societies. An advanced constitution arises only from subordinates' threats of the sovereign and marshals the sovereign's own instruments of force against him.     

Axiomatizations of Dutta-Ray’s egalitarian solution on the domain of convex games

We show that on the domain of convex games, Dutta-Ray’s egalitarian solution is characterized by core selection, aggregate monotonicity, and bounded richness, a new property requiring that the poorest players cannot be made richer within the core. Replacing “poorest” by “poorer” allows to eliminate aggregate monotonicity. Moreover, we show that the egalitarian solution is characterized by constrained welfare egalitarianism and either bilateral consistency à la Davis and Maschler or, together with individual rationality, by bilateral consistency à la Hart and Mas-Colell.