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Full-Text Articles in Law
Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop
Antitrust, Competition Policy, An Inequality, Jonathan Baker, Steven Salop
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Economic inequality recently has entered the political discourse in a highly visible way. This political impact is not a surprise. As the U.S. economy has begun to recover from the Great Recession since mid-2009, economic growth has effectively been appropriated by those already well off, leaving the median household less well off. The serious economic, political and moral issues raised by inequality can be addressed through a panoply of public policies including competition policy, the focus of this article. The article describes the channels through which market power contributes to inequality, and sets forth a range of possible antitrust policy …
Judicial Adherence To A Minimum Core Approach To Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective, Joie Chowdhury
Judicial Adherence To A Minimum Core Approach To Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective, Joie Chowdhury
Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers
Today’s world is witness to extraordinary inequality and the most desperate poverty. Millions of people across the world have no access to adequate food or water, basic health care or minimum levels of education. There are many avenues through which to approach the issue of improving socio-economic conditions. Courts, especially recently, have in certain countries, been seeking to ameliorate these conditions, to some extent, through the means of socio-economic rights adjudication.
For courts to effectively empower people to realize their socio-economic rights, attention to implementation of judgments is essential. A strong normative base for such judgments is just as crucial, …
Pareto Versus Welfare, Robert C. Hockett
Pareto Versus Welfare, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Many normatively oriented economists, legal academics and other policy analysts appear to be "welfarist" and Paretian to at least moderate degree: They deem positive responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the familiar Pareto criteria, to be reasonably undemanding and desirable attributes of any social welfare function (SWF) employed to formulate social evaluations. Some theorists and analysts go further than moderate welfarism or Paretianism, however: They argue that "the Pareto principle" requires the SWF be responsive to individual preferences alone - a position I label "strict" welfarism - and conclude that all social evaluation should in …
Paying To Save: Tax Withholding And Asset Allocation Among Low- And Moderate-Income Taxpayers, Michael S. Barr, Jane Dokko
Paying To Save: Tax Withholding And Asset Allocation Among Low- And Moderate-Income Taxpayers, Michael S. Barr, Jane Dokko
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
We analyze the phenomenon that low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers exhibit a “preference for over-withholding” their taxes, a measure we derive from a unique set of questions administered in a dataset of 1,003 households, which we collected through the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. We argue that the relationship between their withholding preference and portfolio allocation across liquid and illiquid assets is consistent with models with present-biased preferences, and that individuals exhibit self-control problems when making their consumption and saving decisions. Our results support a model in which individuals use commitment devices to constrain their consumption. …
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers
Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE).
A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …
Social Security, Generational Justice, And Long-Term Deficits, Neil H. Buchanan
Social Security, Generational Justice, And Long-Term Deficits, Neil H. Buchanan
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
This paper assesses current methods for evaluating the long-term viability and desirability of government activities, especially Social Security and other big-ticket budget items. I reach four conclusions: (1) There are several simple ways to improve the current debate about fiscal policy by adjusting our crude deficit measures, improvements which ought not to be controversial, (2) Separately measuring Social Security’s long-term balance is inappropriate and misleading, (3) The methods available to measure very long-term government financing (Fiscal Gaps and their cousins, Generational Accounts) are of very limited value in setting public policy today, principally because there is no reliable baseline of …
Does The Tax Law Discriminate Against The Majority Of American Children: The Downside Of Our Progressive Rate Structure And Unbalanced Incentives For Higher Education?, Lester B. Snyder
University of San Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series
Our graduate income tax structure provides an incentive to shift income to lower-bracket family members. However, some parents have much more latitude to shift income to their children than do others. Income derived from services and private business-by far the majority of American income-is less favored than income derived from publicly traded securities. The rationale given for this discrimination is that parents in services or private business, as opposed to those in securities, do not actually part with control of their property. This article explores these tax broader (yet subtle) tax benefits and their impact on the majority of children …
What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan
What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
This article assesses three basic approaches to assessing the future effects of the government’s fiscal policies: traditional measures of the deficit, measures associated with Generational Accounting, and measures derived from applying Capital Budgeting to the federal accounts. I conclude that Capital Budgeting is the best of the three approaches and that Generational Accounting is the least helpful. Acknowledging that there might be some value in learning what we can from a variety of approaches to analyzing fiscal policy, I nevertheless conclude that Generational Accounting is actually a misleading or--at best--empty measure of future fiscal developments. The best approach to providing …
Functional Law And Economics: The Search For Value-Neutral Principles Of Lawmaking, Francesco Parisi, Jonathan Klick
Functional Law And Economics: The Search For Value-Neutral Principles Of Lawmaking, Francesco Parisi, Jonathan Klick
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Liberal Ideals And Political Feasibility: Guest-Worker Programs As Second-Best Policies, Howard F. Chang
Liberal Ideals And Political Feasibility: Guest-Worker Programs As Second-Best Policies, Howard F. Chang
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Market For Medical Ethics, Maxwell Gregg Bloche
The Market For Medical Ethics, Maxwell Gregg Bloche
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
At the core of Kenneth Arrow’s classic 1963 essay on medical uncertainty is a claim that has failed to carry the day among economists. This claim—that physician adherence to an anti-competitive ethic of fidelity to patients and suppression of pecuniary influences on clinical judgment pushes medical markets toward social optimality—has won Arrow near-iconic status among medical ethicists (and many physicians). Yet conventional wisdom among health economists, including several participants in this symposium, holds that this claim is either naïve or outdated. Health economists admire Arrow’s article for its path-breaking analysis of market failures resulting from information asymmetry, uncertainty, and moral …
A Liberal Theory Of Social Welfare: Fairness, Utility, And The Pareto Principle, Howard F. Chang
A Liberal Theory Of Social Welfare: Fairness, Utility, And The Pareto Principle, Howard F. Chang
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Limits Of Social Policy, Cary Coglianese
The Limits Of Social Policy, Cary Coglianese
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.