I will try to make sense of this trend in this paper by formally showing how material growth increases the time spent working in the market while it reduces the time spent in gatherings, in sumposia, with others. Public discourse requires time, to read, think, and interact with others. It is...

We propose that people value not only the goods they consume, but also their freedom, which increases with the number of bundles their budget allows them to buy. We apply this idea to show that citizens may favor proportional taxes over lump-sum taxes, progressive taxes over proportional taxes,...

This paper explores the positive and normative effects of regulations governing the disclosure of product information. As an example, a Japanese food labeling system which requires explicit display of expiration dates is compared with a U.S. system which permits the encoding of expiration dates....

We consider two types of consumers, educated and uneducated, with each preferring a different variety of goods. A decisive set of persons can impose compulsory education on all. We find conditions under which educated persons will want to impose compulsory education, and conditions under which...

We consider a model with two types of consumers, with each preferring a different variety of goods, and with each better at producing the type of good it prefers to consume. We find that under plausible conditions members of the majority group earn a higher wage and enjoy higher utility than...

People who suffer disutility from making mistakes may prefer to face consumption choices which reduce their chances of making mistakes. One consequence is that a firm may attract greater demand by charging a single price for different goods than by charging different prices for different goods.