Economists have traditionally viewed the allocation of workers among jobs through the concept of comparative advantage. This paper investigates hierarchical production models which display an absence of comparative advantage, in order to demonstrate that for hierarchical production there is a second allocating factor which plays an important role. Two results are found. First, the allocation of workers among jobs tends to match high ability workers with positions which value ability highly. Second, despite the fact that the models display an absence of comparative advantage, i.e. the standard theoretical explanation for why wage distributions might be skewed, the models' wage distributions are skewed to the right relative to the underlying ability distributions.

Previous authors who have considered partially nonexcludable goods have claimed that an increase in copyright protection will have the following two effects on social welfare. First, it will decrease the social welfare loss due to underproduction. Second, it will increase the social welfare loss due to underutilization. In this paper we investigate these claims in a formal setting by analyzing a model in which consumers vary only in terms of their costs of obtaining a reproduction. Our analysis provides partial support to the first claim of these previous authors while giving little or no support to the second claim.

Previous authors who have considered partially nonexcludable goods have claimed that an increase in copyright protection will have the following two effects on social welfare. First, it will decrease the social welfare loss due to underproduction. Second, it will increase the social welfare loss due to underutilization. In this paper we investigate these claims in a formal setting by analyzing a model in which consumers vary only in terms of their costs of obtaining a reproduction. Our analysis provides partial support to the first claim of these previous authors while giving little or no support to the second claim.