Economists advocate penalty to raise the demand price for a crime. Then, a higher penalty should mean less crime quantity demanded, while death penalty should eliminate the whole demand. This paper uses red-light running as an example of crime, to explain why such theory fails. It fails, because...

There are two similar yet conflicting urban gradient functions: the housing rent gradient function and the population density gradient function. According to the former, housing rent is a decreasing function of distance from central business district, CBD. The decrease is needed to compensate...

This paper investigates the effect of a move by a household to live away from city center. What do you get from living out of town? It is shown that while you get a lower rent, you also get a larger housing space. However, a surprising result is that your utility level is lowered. This refutes...

This paper will distinguish between owner demand for housing, and that of investors. Such differentiation in demand should be viewed as an integral part of the decision to buy. A durable goods approach to homeowner demand for housing is developed, and then the traditional investment...

Income tax is one of the most important fiscal tools and Mirrlees suggested taxing people according to their ability. This paper proves that the Mirrlees suggestions are inoperative, subjective or contradictory

This paper dispels some suspicion on the validity of Hotelling's "Stability in Competition" conclusion. Sellers do move to the center of the beach, and if there are many sub-beaches, they move to the respective center. If there is a mountain between two beaches, they dig tunnel through it to...

Wicksell advocates unanimous consent for providing public goods. This paper reviews some existing works to fulfill Wicksell’s dream and proves that they are all ineffective. It then develops a model to solve for both the tax rate and the contribution simultaneously. It further proves that such...

Previous bargaining theories confirm that all efforts to stabilize the unstable Pareto optimal solution of cooperation are self-defeating. Instead of issuing threat, this paper shows the carrots. We do not give the players carrots, but we just show them that if they cooperate they can make the...

Bargaining is about how to split a pie between two persons. This paper reveals the inconsistency of the Rubinstein (1982) bargaining model. Its algebra is not correctly reflected by his Edgeworth box. Although an Edgeworth box guarantees complete exhaustion of the resource, it contains two pies....