Recently, some theological ethicists have criticized modern economics for offering a rival theology that undermines an appreciation for creation and God’s gifts. In their view, through the logic of opportunity cost, economics substitutes a tragic world of scarcity for God’s abundance....

The Value of Statistical Life (VSL) is arguably the most important number in benefit-cost analyses of environmental, health, and transportation policies. However, agencies have used a wide range of VSL values. One reason may be the embarrassment of riches when it comes to VSL studies. While...

The standard history of modern environmental economics often views it as an application of A.C. Pigou's theory of externalities, refined over the decades and applied to environmental problems in the 1960s, when the first detailed pro-posals for pricing pollution were outlined by Allen Kneese,...

This paper shows that the capitalization of local amenities is effectively priced into land via a two-part pricing formula: a “ticket” price paid regardless of the amount of housing service consumed and a “slope” price paid per unit of services. We first show theoretically how tickets...

Segregation has been a recurring social concern throughout human history. While much progress has been made to our understanding of the mechanisms driving segregation, work to date has ignored the role played by location-specific amenities. Nonetheless, policy remedies for reducing group...

We re-evaluate two forms of fiscal illusion in local public finance: debt illusion and renter illusion. The Ricardian Equivalence Theorem for local governments suggests the form of finance of a public program (tax or debt finance) has no effects on substantive outcomes. For the local case, this...