This essay attempts to use the pure theory of welfare economics to address the ethical issues that underlie the choice of future population size. The essay begins with a summary of welfare economic theory as it pertains to situations where population size is not subject to choice, and notes that...

The literature on the idea of 'social capital' is now enormous. Offering an alternative to impersonal markets and coercive states, the communitarian institutions built around social capital have looked attractive to scholars in the humanities and social sciences. The literature in consequence...

We show that simple majority rule satisfies five standard and attractive axioms-the Pareto property, anonymity, neutrality, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and (generic) decisiveness-over a larger class of preference domains than (essentially) any other voting rule. Hence, in this...

This article identifies four types of social externalities associated with fertility behavior. Three are shown to be pronatalist in their effects. These three are exemplified by the way theories of economic growth treat fertility and natural resources, the way population growth and economic...

In an earlier paper, we showed that the value of shadow prices depends on how the government contemplates re- equilibrating the economy to the perturbation associated with any project, except in the extreme case where the government has chosen all policy instruments optimally. Only under...

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the...

The word “convexity” is ubiquitous in economics, but absent fromeconomics. In this paper we explain why, and show what differenceit makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non-convexities aretaken seriously. A simple proof is provided of the connectionbetween “self-similarity” and...