The climate policy debate has been dominated by economic estimates of the costs of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the models used to derive those estimates are based on assumptions that have largely gone untested. The conventional approach embodies structural features that rule...

Researchers cannot definitively interpret what the framers of the United States Constitution had in mind when they wrote of the general Welfare. Nevertheless, welfare economics can contribute to policy choice in democracies. Specifying social welfare functions enables coherent analysis, by...

"Analyses of public policy regularly express certitude about the consequences of alternative policy choices. Yet policy predictions often are fragile, with conclusions resting on critical unsupported assumptions. Then the certitude of policy analysis is not credible. This paper develops a...