Regular distributive efficiency and the distributive liberal social contract.

We consider abstract social systems of private property, made of n individuals endowed with non-paternalistic interdependent preferences, who interact through exchanges on competitive markets and Pareto-efficient lumpsum transfers. The transfers follow from a distributive liberal social contract defined as a redistribution of initial endowments such that the resulting market equilibrium allocation is, both, Pareto-efficient relative to individual interdependent preferences, and unanimously weakly preferred to the initial market equilibrium. We elicit the global structure of the set of Pareto-efficient allocations: its relative interior is a simply connected smooth manifold of dimension n-1, homeomorphic to the relative interior of the unit-simplex of ℝn . The property obtains under three suitable conditions on the partial preordering of Pareto associated with individual interdependent preferences, which essentially state that: the social utility functions built from weighted sums of individual interdependent utilities, by means of arbitrary positive weights, exhibit a property of differentiable non-satiation and some suitably defined property of inequality aversion; and individuals have diverging views on redistribution, in some suitable sense, at (inclusive) distributive optima. The set of market equilibrium allocations associated with the transfers of the inclusive distributive liberal social contracts consists of the allocations that are unanimously weakly preferred to the initial market equilibrium and that maximize, in the set of attainable allocations, weighted sums of individual interdependent utilities derived from suitable vectors of positive weights of ℝn ++. Its relative interior is a simply connected smooth manifold of dimension n-1 whenever the initial market equilibrium is not Pareto-efficient relative to individual interdependent preferences.Walrasian equilibrium; Pareto-efficiency; liberal social contract; individual social preferences; allocation; distribution.

Optimal production of transplant care services.

Most organ transplants are from dead donors. National transplant organizations exhibit considerable differences in terms of their donor population rates. Spain’s organization is by far the most efficient in this respect. We argue that much of the productivity advantage of Spain’s transplant organization proceeds from an efficient organization of the production chain, from organ procurement to transplantation. Transplant inputs from dead donors are analogous to a common resource for the transplant community. Their circulation through the national transplant organization creates public good externalities between the care units in charge of organ extraction and those in charge of transplantation. It is shown that a socially efficient production of transplant services requires an optimal control of both the production and the circulation of transplant inputs by the institutions of the transplant system.organ transplants; donation; public goods; production organization.

The Economics of Reciprocity, Giving and Altruism

Macmillan International Economic Association Series October 2000 400 pages Description: Reciprocity is a pervasive type of social interaction in encounters, groups and organizations. Simple giving is one of the major ways of transferring goods. And others regarding social sentiments, play crucial roles in the working and in the quality of society. This volume gathers basic recent works in its main domains such as, among others, the theory of reciprocity, the public economics of transfers, the economics of the family, charities, gifts of organs, or the motivations for gift-giving. It constitutes a landmark in this rapidly expanding field of research. Read PDF sample chapter: http://www.palgrave.com/catalogue/catalogue.asp?Title_Id=0333747690