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Essays in optimal government policy

Robert Nozicka s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a powerful, philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age ---- liberal, socialist and conservative. "Individuals have rights," Nozick writes in his opening sentence, "and there are things no person or group may do to them without violating their rights." The work that follows is a sophisticated and passionate defence of the rights of the individual as opposed to the state. The author argues that the state is justified only when it is severely limited to the narrow function of protection against force, theft and fraud and to the enforcement of contracts. Any more extensive activities by the state, he demonstrates, will inevitably violate individual rights. Among the many achievements of the work are an important new theory of distributive justice, a model of utopia, and an integration of ethics, legal philosophy and economic theory into a profound position in political philosophy which will be discussed for years to come.

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Recent statistical techniques, including nonlinear programming, have been added to a basic survey of equilibrium systems, comparative statistics, consumer behavior theory, and cost and production theory.

Foundations of Economic Analysis

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. 1. INTRODUCTION One would suppose that in any economic system where equality is valued, progressive income taxation would be an important instrument of policy. Even in a highly socialist economy, where all who work are employed by the State, the shadow price of highly skilled labour should surely be considerably greater than the disposable income actually available to the labourer. In Western Europe and America, tax rates on both high and low incomes are widely and lengthily discussed3: but there is virtually no relevant economic theory to appeal to, despite the importance of the tax. Redistributive progressive taxation is usually related to a man's income (or, rather, his estimated income). One might obtain information about a man's income-earning potential from his apparent I.Q., the number of his degrees, his address, age or colour: but the natural, and one would suppose the most reliable, indicator of his income-earning potential is his income. As a result of using men's economic performance as evidence of their economic potentialities, complete equality of social marginal utilities of income ceases to be desirable, for the tax system that would bring about that result would completely discourage unpleasant work. The questions therefore arise what principles should govern an optimum income tax; what such a tax schedule would look like; and what degree of inequality would remain once it was established. The problem seems to be a rather difficult one even in the simplest cases. In this paper, I make the following simplifying assumptions: (1) Intertemporal problems are ignored. It is usual to levy income tax upon each year's income, with only limited possibilities of transferring one year's income to another for tax purposes. In an optimum system, one would no doubt wish …

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An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation

The new critical edition of the works and correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is being prepared and published under the supervision of the Bentham Committee of University College London. In spite of his importance as jurist, philosopher, and social scientist, and leader of the Utilitarian reformers, the only previous edition of his works was a poorly edited and incomplete one brought out within a decade or so of his death. Eight volumes of the new Collected Works, five of correspondence, and three of writings on jurisprudence, appeared between 1968 and 1981, published by the Athlone Press. Further volumes in the series since then are published by Oxford University Press. The overall plan and principles of the edition are set out in the General Preface to The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1, which was the first volume of the Collected Works to be published. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham's best-known work, is a classic text in modern philosophy and jurisprudence. First published in 1789, it contains the important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy and a pioneering study of crime and punishment, both of which remain at the heart of contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory. Printed here in full is the definitive edition, edited by the distinguished scholars J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. An introductory essay by Hart, first published in 1982 and a widely acknowledged classic in its own right, is reprinted here. It contains an important analysis of Bentham's principle of utility, theory of action, and an account of the relationship between law and morality. A new introduction by the leading Bentham scholar F. Rosen, specially written for this Clarendon Paperback edition, provides students with a helpful survey of Bentham's main ideas and an extensive bibliographical study of recent critical work on Bentham. Professor Rosen's essay also contains a new analysis of the principle of utility in Bentham's philosophy which is compared with its use in Hume and J. S. Mill.

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/bentham1780.pdf

An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation

UNTVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY Department of Economics Berkeley, CaHfornia 94720-3880 Working Paper No. 97-251 Psychology and Economics Matthew Rabin Department of Economics University of California, Berkeley January 1997 Key words: bounded rationality, decision making, fairness, framing effects, heuristics and biases, preferences, psychology, reciprocity, reference-dependent utility JEL Classification: A12, B49, D i l , D60, D81, D83, D91 This is a longer version of an essay under preparation for possible publication in the Journal of Economic Literature. I thank John Pencavel and anonymous referees for earlier comments on its structure and content. For comments on this draft, I thank Steven Blatt, Colin Camerer, Peter Diamond, Erik Eyster, Ernst Fehr, Danny Kahneman, George Loewenstein, Ted O'Donoghue, and John Pencavel. For helpful conversations over the past several years on topics covered in this essay, I thank George Akerlof, Gary Chamess, Eddie Dekel, Peter Diamond, David Laibson, David I. Levine, George Loewenstein, Rob MacCoun, James Montgomery, Vai-Lam Mui, Drazen Prelec, and especially Colin Camerer, Danny Kahneman, and Richard Thaler. Co-authors on research related to the topics of this essay include David Bowman, Deborah Minehart, Ted O'Donoghue, and Joel Schrag. Helpful research assistance was provided by Gadi Barlevy, Nikki Blasberg, Gail Brennan, Paul Ellickson, April Franco, Marcus Heng, Bruce Hsu, Jin Woo Jung, and especially Steven Blatt, Jimmy Chan, Erik Eyster, and Clara Wang. I am extremely grateful for financial support from the Russell Sage and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2564950.pdf

Essays in optimal government policy

References

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Foundations of Economic Analysis

An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation

An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation

Psychology and Economics

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