We characterize the incentive compatible allocation that maximizes the expected social surplus in a single-unit sale when the efficient allocation is not implementable. We then show that allowing for the possibility that the good remains unsold may increase the expected social surplus even when allocating the good to no bidder generates less social surplus than allocating to any of the bidders....

We examine the proposal by Peter Zweifel and Michael Breuer to combine risk-based premiums with a subsidy for individuals whose expenditure for health insurance exceeds a certain share of income. Assuming a maximin social welfare function and optimal linear income taxation, we find that this proposal is superior to social insurance if the correlation between productivity and health is not too l...

I use data from the South African Social Giving Survey to investigate the role of social capital and motivations for giving to formal charities and beggars. Results suggest that both impure altruism and inequality aversion positively influence giving to formal charities but they have no influence on giving to beggars. The role of social capital is varied. Members of informal insurance groups ar...

Much of the existing approach to the digital divide suffers from an important limitation. It is based on a binary classification of Internet use by only considering whether someone is or is not an Internet user. To remedy this shortcoming, this project looks at the differences in people’s level of skill with respect to finding information online. Findings suggest that people search for content ...

Despite the rapid penetration of social media in modern life, there has been limited research conducted on whether social media serves as a credible source of health information. In this study, we propose to identify colorectal cancer information on Twitter and assess its informational credibility. We collected Twitter messages containing colorectal cancer-related keywords, over a 3-month perio...

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance. A review of this literature reveals that the concept of an “institution” means different things to different scholars, both within economics and across the social sciences. We discuss what factors unify the different definitions of institutions, and develop a concept of institutions useful for the ...

This paper considers social choice theory without the Pareto principle. We revisit the trade-off theorem developed by Campbell and Kelly (Econometrica 61:1355– 1365, 1993), and generalize their result. By introducing an alternative criterion of power structure, a dominance relation, we show that if a social welfare function on the unrestricted domain satisfies the independence of irrelevant alt...

The paper discusses rationality at two levels. According to a common opinion the key to rationality at the group level is a willingness to contribute unselfishly at the individual level. I claim that even when rationality at the individual level is denied, it is often achieved by social punishment. The difficulty to organize a social project is exaggerated. The relative ease of implementing ind...

The increasing speed of globalisation has created both opportunities and challenges to many transitional economies. This paper analyses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the productivity of the State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and concludes that SOE reform is inevitable. The SOEs’ obligations to provide social welfare should be removed to enable them to compete on an equal footing ...

in this paper, using kakwani-son method, price elasticity of poverty is calculated for taxed edible goods in the year 2004. this elasticity shows the total effect of price changes on poverty. the total effect is the sum of redistribution and income effects of price change. in fact, the redistribution effect tells us whether an increase in the price of a commodity hurts the poor more than the ri...