Intergenerational Fiscal Constitutions: How to Protect Future Generations Using Land Taxes and Federalism

This paper studies how to design a fiscal constitution that, by capitalizing intergenerational spillovers into land values, is able to protect future generations from expropriation and to generate optimal investment in intergenerational public goods. In particular, we study how to accomplish these goals by changing two dimensions of the fiscal constitution: (1) the level of government to which different types of intergenerational public goods are assigned, and (2) the tax base of the different jurisdictions. We show that the instruments required to generate capitalization of the intergenerational spillovers depend on the type of the spillover. Land taxation is the essential instrument for policies that mostly generate fiscal spillovers, such as debt and public infrastructure. By contrast, interjurisdictional competition is the essential instrument for policies that mostly generate direct spillovers, such as irreversible environmental damages. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to design a fiscal constitution that generates full capitalization of fiscal spillovers, but in general, not one that generates full capitalization of direct spillovers.

Anonymous Price Taking Equilibrium in Tiebout Economies with Unbounded Club Sizes

We introduce a model of a local public goods economy with a continuum of agents and jurisdictions with finite, but unbounded populations. Under boundedness of per capita payoffs we demonstrate nonemptiness of the core of the economy. We then demonstrate that the equal treatment core coincides with the set of price-taking equilibrium outcomes with anonymous prices - that is, prices for public goods depend only on observable characteristics of agents. Existence of equilibrium follows from nonemptiness of the core and equivalence of the core to the set of equilibrium outcomes. Our approach provides a new technique for showing existence of equilibrium in economies with a continuum of agents.Tiebout, Clubs, Jurisdictions, F-core, Core-equilibrium equivalence, Edgeworth equivalence, Continuum economies with clubs, Crowding types, Core, Equal treatment core

Evolution & voting : how nature makes us public spirited

We reconsider the classic puzzle of why election turnouts are persistently so high even though formal analysis strongly suggests that rational agents should not vote. If we assume that voters are not making systematic mistakes, the most plausible explanation seems to be that agents receive benefits from the act of voting itself. This is very close to assuming the answer, however, and immediately begs the question of why agents feel a warm glow from participating in the electoral process. In this paper, we approach the question from an evolutionary standpoint. We show for a range of situations, that public-spirited agents have an evolutionary advantage over those who are not as public-spirited. We also explore conditions under which this kind of altruistic behavior is disadvantageous to agents. The details depend on the costs of voting, the degree to which different types of agents have different preferences over public policies and the relative proportions of various preference types in the population, but we conclude that evolution may often be a force that causes agents to internalize the benefits their actions

Nonrivalry and Price Discrimination in Copyright Economics

The literature on the economics of copyright proceeds from the premise that copyrightable works constitute pure public goods, which is generally modeled by assuming that such works are nonexcludable and that the marginal cost of making additional copies is essentially zero. A close examination of the foundational literature on public goods theory reveals that the defining characteristic of public goods is instead the optimality criterion known as the “Samuelson condition,” which implies that the systematic bias toward underproduction is the result of the inability to induce consumers to reveal their preferences rather than the inability to exclude or price at marginal cost. Reframing the analysis in terms of the Samuelson condition also contradicts the hostility toward price discrimination reflected in much of the literature by implying that price discrimination is a necessary condition for optimality. At the same time, it implies that the producer need only appropriate the marginal benefits created by the public good, which in turn provides a basis for determining an optimal level of price discrimination that still permits consumers to retain some of the surplus. Moreover, broadening public good models to reflect the fact that copyrighted works often serve as imperfect substitutes for one another allows the number of works to be determined endogenously. In such impure public goods models, the systematic bias toward underproduction disappears, and price discrimination once again may (but need not necessarily) promote optimality

Incentives and the Effects of Publication Lags on Life Cycle Research Productivity in Economics

We investigate how increases in publication delays have affected the life-cycle of publications of recent Ph.D. graduates in economics. We construct a panel dataset of 14,271 individuals who were awarded Ph.D.s between 1986 and 2000 in US and Canadian economics departments. For this population of scholars, we amass complete records of publications in peer reviewed journals listed in the JEL (a total of 368,672 observations). We find evidence of significantly diminished productivity in recent relative to earlier cohorts when productivity of an individual is measured by the number of AER equivalent publications. Diminished productivity is less evident when number of AER equivalent pages is used instead. Our findings are consistent with earlier empirical findings of increasing editorial delays, decreasing acceptance rates at journals, and a trend toward longer manuscripts. This decline in productivity is evident in both graduates of top thirty and non-top thirty ranked economics departments and may have important implications for what should constitute a tenurable record. We also find that the research rankings of the faculty do not line up with the research quality of their students in many cases.

Evolution & voting: how nature makes us public spirited

We reconsider the classic puzzle of why election turnouts are persistently so high when formal analysis strongly suggests that rational agents should not vote. If we assume that voters are not making systematic mistakes,the most plausible explanation seems to be agents receive benefits, from the act of voting itself. This is very close to assuming the answer, however, and immediately begs the question of why agents feel a warm glow from participating in the electoral process. In this paper, we approach this question from an evolutionary standpoint. We show for a range of situations that public-spirited agents have an evolutionary advantage over those who are not as public-spirited. We also explore when this kind of altruistic behavior is disadvantageous to agents. The details depend on the costs of voting, the degree to which agents have different preferences over public policies and the ratio of various preference types in the population, but we conclude that evolution may often be a force that causes agents to internalize the benefits their actions confer on other

The law of demand in tiebout economies

We consider a general equilibrium local public goods economy in which agents have two distinguishing characteristics. The first is 'crowding type', which is publicly observable and provides direct costs or benefits to the jurisdiction (coalition or firms) the agent joins. The second is taste type, which is not publicly observable, has no direct effects on others and is defined over private good, public goods and the crowding profile of the jurisdiction the agent joins. The law of demand suggests that as the quantity of a given crowding type (plummers, lawers, smart people, tall people, nonsmokers, for example) increases, the compensation that agents of that type receive should go down. We provide counterexamples, however, that show that some agents of a given crowding type might actually benefit when the proportion of agents with the same crowding type increases. This reversal of the law of demand seems to have to do with interaction effect between tastes and skills, something difficult to study without making these classes of characteristics distinct. We argue that this reversal seems to relate to the degree of difference between various patterns of tastes. In particular, if tastes are homogeneous, the law of demand holds

Generalized Samuelson conditions and welfare theorems for noonsmooth economies

Includes bibliographical references (p. 16-17)

The next controversy in genetic testing: clinical data as trade secrets?

Sole-source business models for genetic testing can create private databases containing information vital to interpreting the clinical significance of human genetic variations. But incomplete access to those databases threatens to impede the clinical interpretation of genomic medicine. National health systems and insurers, regulators, researchers, providers and patients all have a strong interest in ensuring broad access to information about the clinical significance of variants discovered through genetic testing. They can create incentives for sharing data and interpretive algorithms in several ways, including: promoting voluntary sharing; requiring laboratories to share as a condition of payment for or regulatory approval of laboratory services; establishing – and compelling participation in – resources that capture the information needed to interpret the data independent of company policies; and paying for sharing and interpretation in addition to paying for the test itself. US policies have failed to address the data-sharing issue. The entry of new and established firms into the European genetic testing market presents an opportunity to correct this failure

Prospectus, October 14, 1981

NC PANEL STUDIES PC; News In Brief; MTD to raise rates; Music groups to perform; Tourneys continue; Ship collection shown at Parkland; We hear from you…; Parkland offers two courses at Mahomet; Center offers support; Bell telephone celebrates 100th year; Ultimate generic product is here; English 100 enrollment sets record; Burt wants a child; Take a tour through Illinois Bell; Meet: Louise!; People; Classifieds; Fast Freddy fumbles; Runners place fourth; Sports Notes; V-ballers net victories; Fast Freddy Contest; Refund forms hard to find in C-U areahttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1981/1009/thumbnail.jp