The Allocation of Resources in the Presence of Indivisibilities

By Herbert Scarf

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

A major theme of economic theory is that optimality, at the level of the firm or the economy as a whole, can be reached by profit maximization using competitive prices. The conclusion requires the assumption that the production possibility set be convex a...

Nonprofit Organizations in the Health Sector

By Richard G. Frank and David S. Salkever

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

Government appears to both promote and mistrust nonprofit organizations in the health sector. Tax exemptions, subsidies, and preferential treatment in contracts support these organizations. Legislation that links the supply of charity care to tax exemptio...

Intergenerational Transfers and the Accumulation of Wealth

By William G. Gale and John Karl Scholz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

This paper uses household data to provide direct estimates of intergenerational transfers as a source of wealth. The authors distinguish between intended transfers (for example, gifts to other households) and possibly unintended transfers (bequests) and e...

Distinguished Fellow: Herbert Scarf's Contributions to Economics

By Kenneth J. Arrow and Timothy J. Kehoe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

For the past thirty-five years, Herbert Scarf has made fundamental contributions in studies of inventories, the core, computation of equilibria, and integer programming. His work has simultaneously sought the most general and abstract formulations while s...

Policy Watch: Proposals for Time-Limited Welfare

By Rebecca M. Blank

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

This paper summarizes the Clinton administration's welfare reform proposal and views the available evidence on the effects of time-limiting cash assistance and requiring work among long-term Aid to Families with Dependent Children users. The reforms are d...

Recommendations for Further Reading

By Bernard Saffran

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

Correspondence

By Scott Sumner

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

Correspondence regarding: The Case of the Missing Currency Income-Contingent College Loans

Front Matter

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

Notes

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

Index for Volume 8

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 1994

An Introduction to Vote-Counting Schemes

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Jonathan Levin and Barry Nalebuff

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

Many researchers, following Kenneth Arrow's lead, have concerned themselves with stating various desirable or undesirable criteria and attempting to classify vote-counting systems. This paper moves away from theoretical discussions: the authors illustrate...

The Single Transferable Vote

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Nicolaus Tideman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

The single transferable vote (STV) is a family of vote-counting procedures that use voters' rankings of candidates as input and achieve proportional representation. This paper compares STV with other types of voting procedures and discusses the history of...

Approval Voting

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Robert J. Weber

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

Under approval voting, a voter may cast single votes for each of any number of candidates. In this paper, the history of approval voting and some of its properties are reviewed. When voters vote sincerely, approval voting compares favorably with both the ...

Optimal Voting Rules

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Peyton Young

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

Modern social choice theory, following Kenneth Arrow, treats voting as a method for aggregating diverse preferences and values. An earlier view, initiated by Marquis de Condorcet, is that voting is a method for aggregating information. Voters' opinions di...

Using District Magnitude to Regulate Political Party Competition

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Douglas W. Rae

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

This is an essay about the use of districting systems to regulate electoral outcomes and the evolution of party systems. By changing the number of seats from each district, a balance can be struck between the often conflicting goals of minority representa...

Analysis of Democratic Institutions: Structure, Conduct and Performance

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Roger B. Myerson

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

This paper develops an economic perspective on political theory as a guide to some problems and directions of current research. The electoral system and the allocation of powers to elected offices together define the game that politicians play. So democra...

How to Judge Voting Schemes

[Symposium: Economics of Voting]

By Amartya Sen

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

This symposium on voting procedures presents many interesting findings and insights. This note scrutinizes them and discusses two general issues. First, the assumption that voters' preferences are menu-independent (and based on one canonical ordering of t...

Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?

By Richard Arnott

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

Economists' traditional hostility to rent contols is based on models that treat the housing market as perfectly competitive and on the experience with 'hard' controls in New York City and many European countries following World War II. The current 'soft' ...

Value-Added Taxation: A Tax Whose Time Has Come?

By Gilbert E. Metcalf

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

Value-added taxes (VATs) are used in a large number of developed countries and have been under consideration at the national level in the United States in recent years. This paper provides an introduction to the tax for those unfamiliar with it. The autho...

Distributed Computation as an Economic System

By Bernardo A. Huberman and Tad Hogg

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995

As computer networks grow and blanket the planet, they become a community of concurrent processes, which, in their interactions, strategies, and lack of perfect knowledge, become analogous to human market economies. Economics may thus offer new ways of de...