We address a puzzle in welfare economics - the possibility that rational people may be simultaneously against two apparently con‡icting forms of "tyranny." In fact the two types of tyranny can be reconciled but at the possible cost of con‡ict with other standard welfare principles. We...

This paper studies the impact of employment subsidies in a simple macroeconomic model with imperfect competition and unemployment due to wage rigidity. COmputed with a simple formula that is robust to the specification of imperfect competition and wage rigidity, subsidies can make an economy...

The paper considers the problem of comparing income distributions for heterogeneous populations. Following Atkinson and Bourguignon (1987), we divide the population in different groups of needs and evaluate the social welfare with a utilitarian function. By considering the Generalized...