Abstract: Since the 18th century, doubt has been raised concerning “rational” majoritarian public choice: the “voting paradox” holds, in a simple calculation made famous by the Marquis de Condorcet, that rational resolution of divergent preferences by voting is impossible. The economist...

We investigate the implementation of social choice functions (SCFs) from an epistemological perspective. We consider the possibility that in higher-order beliefs there exists an honest agent who is motivated by intrinsic preference for honesty as well as material interest. We assume weak...

How much discretion should the monetary authority have in setting its policy? This question is analyzed in an economy with an agreed-upon social welfare function that depends on the randomly fluctuating state of the economy. The monetary authority has private information about that state. In the...

Can a preference-based conception of welfare accommodate changes in people's preferences? I argue that the fact that people care about which preferences they have, and the fact that people can change their preferences about which preferences it is good for them to have, together undermine the...

The class of "rank-additive" (RA) axiologies includes rank-weighted utilitarian, generalized utilitarian, and rank-discounted generalized utilitarian rules; it is a flexible framework for population ethics. This paper axiomatically characterizes RA axiologies and studies their properties in two...

This paper reports on experiments regarding cheap talk games where senders attempt deception when their interests are not in conflict with those of the receiver. The amount of miscommunication is higher than in previous experimental findings on cheap talk games in situations where senders’ and...

The inclination of individuals to improve their performance when it lags behind that of others with whom they naturally compare themselves can be harnessed to optimize the individuals' effort in work and study. In a given set of individuals, we characterize each individual by his relative...