How do voters evaluate candidates in competitive elections? Gordon et al. [Gordon, S.C., Huber, G.A., Landa, D., 2007. Challenger entry and voter learning. American Political Science Review 101 (May), pp. 303–320.] present a model in which the fact of a serious electoral challenge conveys information about the relative competence of the candidates, over and above that conveyed by observable mea...

The paper questions the standard economic assumptions that competing economic agents have identical reservation utility levels, and that when differences in opportunity costs exit, they can be conveniently represented by fixed costs. Opportunity costs are endogenized by linking them to current efficiency. The effect of this interchangeability of skills is studied in the context of the effect of...

This study develops an empirical model of adolescent premarital childbearing which emphasizes the influence of opportunity costs. The model estimates determinants of premarital pregnancy, the choice to abort or carry to term, and whether a marriage occurs before the birth. The sample is from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The long-run opportunity costs are the predicted effects of p...

The costs of rent seeking exceed traditional measures when opportunity cost is considered. When the quantity of resources consumed by rent seeking is large, rent seeking draws consumer surplus out of alternative resource employments. The costs of rent seeking differ in partial and general equilibrium frameworks; Tullock (1989) recognizes this but incorrectly argues that rent seeking costs are t...

Health care costs in the United States now consume nearly 15% of the gross domestic product. Continued expansion of health expenditures may have serious economic consequences, including reduction in the standard of living. Health care reform must include cost control without consequent detrimental effects on health status. As a case example, we consider the controversy surrounding mammography s...