Theoreticians claim that negotiated compensation plans could overcome local resistance to nuclear waste (or other less than desirable) facilities, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 gives the Department of Energy considerable flexibility to negotiate with and compensate states in which it...

Welfare economics is evaluated as a framework for setting policy with respect to the greenhouse effect. It is found to be unpromising for three reasons: (1) The concept of discounting leads to the view that events in the further future have no value, (2) the baselines necessary to use...

Why did tax reform succeed in gaining passage while the family assistance plan failed? Using cultural theory, we argue that the active consent of elites from three political cultures is required before radical policy proposals will win political support in America. Although the Nixon...

A model based upon the common concept of rent-seeking behavior avoids an exclusive focus on the pecuniary motive in private institutions and the power motive in public institutions. Using this model, the case for privatization ranges from very strong to unpersuasive, with some fascinating...

Most studies evaluating the effect on housing prices of regulatory programs for controlling urban growth use econometric methods (hedonic price models) without considering the research-design aspects of the task. The article examines the strengths and weaknesses of several quasiexperimental and...

How do we measure and rate the social welfare efforts of nations? Most people consider the U.S. and Japan welfare laggards when compared with European countries. This view derives from a widely used measure of “welfare effort”-direct government outlays for social programs as the percentage...