This chapter takes stock of what has been learned from the recent micro-development literature about wedges - mechanisms generating dispersion in marginal revenue products of factors across firms, which are commonly interpreted as indicators of misallocation. We present a general theoretical...

The Deferred Acceptance (DA) algorithm is stable and strategy-proof, but can produce matchings that are Pareto-inefficient for students, and thus several alternatives have been proposed to correct this inefficiency that only involve consented priority violations. However, we show that these...

We consider welfare impacts of prohibitive tariffs on trading partners. Initially, there is prohibitive tariff by one country and a zero tariff by its trading partner. Thereafter, the trading partner also resorts to prohibitive tariff. We demonstrate how prohibitive tariffs by the trading...

We develop a unified cost-benefit framework that allows for a better understanding of nature conservation and climate policies under risk and uncertainty. We derive modified Hotelling rules from a social planner’s welfare optimization. They reveal four forces that jointly determine market...

We study how variation in the allocation mechanism of public demand shapes firm performance and aggregate productivity. Exploiting the quasi-random implementation of an efficient or lottery-like auction format in the Italian construction sector, we find that when the same amount of public...

Carbon leakage is a major concern in the design of unilateral climate policies aimed at reducing global emissions in a cost-effective manner. In order to assess the cost-effectiveness of anti-leakage measures, it is crucial to understand the fundamental mechanisms that contribute to leakage. We...

Revealed preference theory (RPT) and its behavioral extension (BRPT) underpin an important strand of welfare economics. Their normative appeal rests on the claim that welfare can be inferred from observed behavior without substantive assumptions about what agents should value - a property I call...

The introduction of the new delivery model in the 2023-2027 Common Agricultural Policy increased the decision-making and management autonomy of Member States and their regions when implementing Rural Development policies. Thus, understanding the drivers behind allocation choices for rural...

We review the evolution of the concept of utility in economics, addressing the conceptual and terminological fragmentation that characterises the interdisciplinary debate. This study adopts the scoping review framework to systematically analyse the main theoretical approaches, ranging from...

Production scheduling is critical in manufacturing operations, requiring the optimal assignment of limited resources. This paper introduces a novel generalization of the Unrelated Parallel Machine (UPM) problem, addressing key real-world complexities: sequence- and machine-dependent setup times,...

We study the micro sources and macro consequences of worker–job matching across countries with large income differences. Using internationally comparable data on over 120,000 individuals in 30 countries, we document that workers' skills align more closely with their jobs' skill requirements in...

The well-known cooperative game solution core, with its strict stability requirement, provides no solution for non-balanced games. Subiza et al. (2025) relaxes the stability concept of the core and proposes δ-stable set, a non-empty solution for every essential TU-game. However, their approach...

Many states have capped consumer loan interest rates to protect households from high-cost lenders. Using triple-difference and event study analysis, we investigate how these usury limits affect the availability and allocation of credit across households. Consistent with standard price theory, we...

We consider a package assignment problem with money, in which a set M of objects is allocated to agents. Each agent has preferences that are not necessarily quasi-linear. The admissible set of object allocations is chosen by the planner to pursue specific objectives in conjunction with the rule....