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Independence of Allocative Efficiency from Distribution in the Theory of Public Goods

Econometrica 1983 51(6), 1753 open access
When is the Pareto optimal amount of public goods independent of income distribution? Subject to some regularity conditions, the answer is when preferences of every individual i can be represented by a utility function of the form U(X_i,Y)=A(Y)X_i+B_i(Y) where X_i is i's consumption of private goods and Y is the amount of public goods.

Rotten Kids, Purity, and Perfection

Journal of Political Economy 1999 107(5), 1034-1040
Bergstrom has shown that becker's “Rotten Kid theorem” holds in a world of two commodities if their utilities are transferable. The present paper identifies a further circumstance in which the theorem is valid. We show that it also holds in the absence of transferable utility if the externalities are assumed to take the form of a single pure public good.