The valuation of the firm in the context of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) of Sharpe [22] and Lintner [18] brings into a new focus the product ion-investment decisions of the firm faced with demand and cost uncertainty. The market value of the firm and the level of systematic risk which arise from its product ion-investment decisions become items of primary importance. Although there are earlier treatments of the real determinants of valuation and risk in a dynamic context (e.g., Thomadakis [24] and Myers and Turnbull [20]), the case of a firm which experiments for the acquisition of information can furnish new insights.

A consumer faces list prices for commodities, but can buy one at a discount. Discounts vary randomly between sellers. The number of quotations sought depends on list prices, search costs and wealth. This function is homogeneous of degree zero, and, provided some sufficient conditions are satisfied, is; increasing in wealth; decreasing in search cost; independent of the list price of the discounted commodity if indirect utility is multiplicatively separable; increasing in the list price if the commodity is a necessity; increasing in the list price of substitutes. Slutsky's equation is generalized to include search.

The literature on inequality measurement has been largely concerned with single-dimensioned indicators. This paper explores some of the issues which arise when there are several dimensions to inequality, and these are not readily reduced to a single index, concentrating particularly on the two-dimensioned case. We make use of results on multi-variate stochastic dominance in portfolio theory, extending these and applying them to the measurement of inequality. The use of the dominance conditions is illustrated by an application to the international distribution of income and life expectancy.