The concept of market failure was originally presented by economists as a normative explanation of why the need for government expenditures might arise. Gradually, the concept has taken on the form of a full-scale diagnostic tool frequently employed by policy analysts to determine the exact...

In recent years there has been a debate over whether or not moral sentiments should be included in normative economic analysis. This paper compares the standard normative criteria for benefit cost analysis, Kaldor-Hicks, that does not include moral sentiments with a modification that does called...

The Kaldor-Hicks (KH) criterion has long been the standard for benefit-cost analysis, but it has also been widely criticized for ignoring equity and, arguably, moral sentiments in general. We suggest replacing KH with an aggregate measure called KHM, where the M stands for moral sentiments. KHM...

The question of the proper role of government in the marketplace is an old and fundamental one. In the search for objective standards by which such decisions can be made, public officials increasingly have turned to the concept of market failure. Use of the market-failure concept is widespread...

The Kaldor-Hicks (KH) criterion has long been the standard for benefit-cost analysis, but it has also been widely criticized for ignoring equity and, arguably, moral sentiments in general. We suggest replacing KH with an aggregate measure called KHM, where the M stands for moral sentiments. KHM...

The foster care system attempts to prepare children and youth who have suffered child maltreatment for successful adult lives. This study documents the economic advantages of a privately funded foster care program that provided longer term, more intensive, and more expensive services compared to...

In a paper delivered at the December 1955 meeting of the Econometric Society, Paul Samuelson noted that though economists had done "work of high quality and great quantity in the field of taxation," the theory of public expenditure had been "relatively neglected" (1958, 332). Anglo-American...

One of the more striking features of the debate over the Coase theorem is the wide variety of models and theoretical frameworks used to discuss, evaluate, or otherwise analyze Coase’s result - an artifact of an ambiguity in Coase’s reasoning. Some framed Coase’s result in a bargaining...

The present paper revisits the path by which Coase came to set down the result now generally known as the Coase theorem in his 1960 article. I draw on both the published record and archival resources in an effort to clear away some of the mist and, as it will emerge, dispel some of the...