This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

Altruism, giving and pro-social conduct, and reciprocity, are the basis of the existence and performance of societies, through their various occurrences: in families; among the diverse motives of the political and public sector; as the general respect and moral conduct which permit life in...

We show that any transferable utility game can be represented by an assignment of facilities to players, in which it is intuitively obvious how to allocate the total cost of the facilities. The intuitive solution in the representation turns out to be the Shapley value of the game, and thus...

The most successful human societies are those that have found better ways to promote cooperative behaviour. Yet, cooperation is individually costly and, therefore, it often breaks down, leading to enormous social costs. In this article, I review the literature on the mechanisms and interventions...

This paper analyses lawyer's choices of law in international sales contracts. It identifies key reasons for opting in or out of the CISG across different jurisdictions. The paper then examines aspects of this choice from economic and psychological perspectives: from the ability to externalize...

Why do lawyers in some jurisdictions continue to ‘automatically’ exclude the 1980 UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in their choices of law for international sales contracts? Why do lawyers in other jurisdictions approach the decision very differently? Why...

The literature of welfare-maximising greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies pays remarkably little attention to equity. This paper introduces three ways to consider efficiency and equity simultaneously. The first method, inspired by Kant and Rawls, maximises net present welfare, without...

I study a model where people can be matched in fractions. That is to say, whether a pair is matched is not a binary matter. They can be matched with some intensity. Each has a fixed availability: the total intensity with which he is matched to his partners. I propose a notion of competitive...

We study the marriage problem where a probability distribution over matchings is chosen. The “core” has been central to the the analysis of the deterministic problem. This is particularly the case since it coincides with the (conceptually) simpler set of “stable” matchings. While the...

A standard justification for state intervention and regulation is the market failure known as public goods. Assuming the private market cannot appropriately react to the true demand for public goods, the regulator must decide which goods to supply and in what quantity. A regulator wishing to...