A Diagrammatic Exposition of Weak Complementarity and the Willig Condition

This article provides a graphical explanation for one of the most important restrictions to utility functions used in revealed preference approaches for measuring the demand for public goods and product quality—weak complementarity. It also describes how the Willig condition is an important element along with weak complementarity in measuring Hicksian consumer surplus for changes in public goods or quality using Marshallian demand curves. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

What's wrong with New Zealand's public benefit test?

New Zealand courts and regulatory authorities have since 1994 adopted an extreme neoliberal version of the public benefit test, treating wealth transfers from consumers to monopolists as welfare-neutral. This abandonment of the long-established consumer-welfare or balancing-weights standards used in most other OECD jurisdictions rests upon a misconstruction of the alleged inability of economists to reach consensus on how to evaluate changes in income distribution. The intellectual cul-de-sac occupied by “new welfare economics” should leave policymakers free to attack monopoly profits without having to endure utilitarian criticisms from neoliberal economists. In doing so. New Zealand policymakers would be acting in accordance with strong economic arguments for restraining monopoly, drawn from the wider mainstream of the economic literature and requiring no utilitarian underpinning.

Tender Mercies: Efficient and Equitable Land use Change

A two-tiered, front-end-loaded tender offer system is shown to catalyze a market for partial property rights. This market would obviate any legitimate need for governmental zoning, and thus would put an end to zoning's inefficiency and inequity. The proposed system would facilitate development and redevelopment, cause nuisance producing zones to become more compact, stop the subversion of zoning for fiscal and exclusionary purposes, reduce the opportunities for corruption and end rent seeking as well as "not in my backyard" activities. The proposed tender offer system would fully compensate those who are injured by negative externalities, thereby eliminating adverse distributional effects. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.