Three great classical economists, Adam Smith, John S. Mill, and Karl Marx, identified forms of "trouble" at work, troubles too serious to be called simply "job dissatisfaction" and many of which are still with us. Their identification and analysis have nothing to do with the labor theory of...

This paper presents a case against the use of the sum of compensating variations as a cost-benefit test. The authors argue that (1) the ethical judgments implied by the test are not defensible; (2) positive sums of compensating variations occur without potential Pareto improvements, resulting in...