Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2008. / "Publication number: AAT 3326429."

Extra t.p., with thesis statement, inserted. / Bibliography: p. 154-160.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1976. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-271).

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / In Chapter I, the object of the study is outlined, followed by a discussion of Pre-Pigovian welfare economics. The purpose of our study consists in a critical analysis of Professor Pigou1s welfare concept and propositions in the light of ideas held by his predecessors and successors. Pre-Pigovian welfare economics is dealt with under three different groups among which a logical classification is possible, These groups are English classical economists (A. Smith, B. Say, D. Ricardo, and others), continental classical economists (V. Pareto, L. Walras, E. Barone) and neo-claseical economists (H. Sidgwick, A. Marshall, and others), It is shown that the English classical economists regarded free competition as a means to the widening of the economy rather than to a rational allocation of resources, The continental economists, Pareto and Barone formulated the concept of subjective optimum and dealt with the problem of allocation in the static sense. The neo-classical economists made a compromise. While accepting the doctrine of marginal utility, they were not preoccupied with the static problem of allocation. In the manner of the English classicists, they discussed the forces which govern the supply of ultimate factors of production and human wants. A typical feature of neo-classical economics is Marshall's partial surplus analysis.

Harberger's methodology for the measurement of deadweight loss is reformulated in a general equilibrium context with adopting the Allais-Debreu-Diewert approach and is applied to various problems with imperfect markets. We also develop second best project evaluation rules for the same class of economies. Chapter 1 is devoted to the survey of various welfare indicators. We especially discuss the two welfare indicators due to Allais, Debreu, Diewert and Hicks, Boiteux in relation to Bergson-Samuelsonian social welfare function. We first show that these two measures generate a Pareto inclusive ordering across various social states, but they are rarely welfarist, so that both are unsatisfactory as Bergson-Samuelsonian social welfare functions. We next show that second order approximations to the Allais-Debreu-Diewert measure of waste can be computed from local information observable at the equilibrium, whereas second order approximations to the Hicks-Boiteux measure of welfare or to the Bergson -Samuelsonian social welfare function require information on the marginal utilities of income of households, which is unavailable with ordinal utility theory. Finally, we give a diagrammatic exposition of the two measures and their approximations to give an intuitive insight into the economic implications of the two measures. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 study an economy with public goods. In Chapter 2, we compute an approximate deadweight loss measure for the whole economy when the endogenous choice of public goods by the government is nonoptimal and the government revenue is raised by distortionary taxation by extending the Allais-Debreu-Diewert approach discussed in Chapter 1. The resulting measure of waste is related to indirect tax rates, net marginal benefits of public goods, and the derivatives of aggregate demand and supply functions evaluated at an equilibrium. In Chapter 3, cost-benefit rules for the provision of a public good are derived when there exist tax distortions. We derive the rules as giving sufficient conditions for Pareto improvement, but we also discuss when these rules are necessary conditions for an interior social optimum. When indirect taxes are fully flexible but lump-sum transfers are restricted, we recommend a rule which generalized the cost-benefit rule due to Atkinson and Stern (1974) to a many-consumer economy. When both indirect taxes and lump-sum transfers are flexible, we suggest a rule which is based on Diamond and Mirrlees' (1971) productive efficiency principle. When only lump-sum transfers are variable, we obtain a version of the Harberger (1971)-Bruce-Harris (1982) cost-benefit rules. Chapters 4 and 5 study an economy with increasing returns to scale in production and imperfect competition. In Chapter 4, we discuss a methodology for computing an approximate deadweight loss due to imperfect regulation of monopolistic industries by extending the Allais-Debreu-Diewert approach to incorporate the nonconvex technology. With the assumption of the quasi-con-cavity of production functions and fixed number of firms, we can derive an approximate deadweight loss formula which is related to markup rates of firms, and the derivatives of aggregate demand functions, factor supply and demand functions and the derivatives of marginal cost functions. We also discuss various limitations of our approach and the relation between our work and that of Hotelling (1938). In Chapter 5, we consider cost-benefit rules of a large project applicable in the presence of imperfect competition. We show that the index number approach due to Negishi (1962) and Harris (1978) can be extended to handle situations with imperfect competition. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

No description available.

The thesis analyzes the validity of consumer's surplus as a measure of welfare change. The analysis begins by examining the chronological development of the concept. Once an understanding of consumer's surplus is formulated, an evaluation of its use in modern ad hoc problems can be undertaken. Chapter II and III discuss the development of consumer's surplus from Classical economics to its modern reformulations, The concept's application to different problems is discussed in Chapter IV. Chapter V and VI deal with the intergration of consumer's surplus and the compensation principle. The primary conclusion is that the Laspeyres measure, in combination with the compensation test, provides a definitive measure of welfare change in a limited situation.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of ascertaining whether or not A. C. Pigou led to the development of a modern school of Welfare Economics. This study has a threefold purpose. The first is to examine the welfare criterion of the classical tradition. The second is to examine the welfare criterion of the neoclassical tradition. The third is to develop a synthesis of classical and neoclassical into a modern welfare criterion. This study concludes that A. C. Pigou has founded a modern school of Welfare Economics. Pigou accomplished this by synthesizing the welfare doctrines of the classical tradition with that of the neoclassical tradition.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This dissertation is a collection of three essays on price and welfare. The first chapter investigates the optimal price index for central banks to stabilize in a model economy where volatile prices are harmful to welfare through monetary friction. The second chapter estimates the impact of recent technological innovation, namely the internet, on the dynamics of prices and welfare through a variety of real mechanisms. The third chapter analyzes the impact of financial regulation on the prices of financial assets and the welfare of the financial market participants. There is currently a debate about what price index central banks should target when economies are open and exposed to international price shocks. Chapter 1 derives the optimal price index by solving the Ramsey problem in a New Keynesian small open economy model with an arbitrary number of sectors. This approach improves on existing theoretical benchmarks because (1) it makes an explicit distinction between the consumer price index (CPI) and the producer price index (PPI), and (2) it allows exogenous international price shocks to play a role. Qualitatively, I use the analytical expression of the optimal price index to discuss that popular indices, such as the PPI and the core/headline CPI, are suboptimal because they ignore the heterogeneity in price stickiness and the effect of inflation on the trade surplus. Quantitatively, I calibrate a 35-sector version of the model for 40 countries and show that stabilizing the optimal price index yields significantly higher welfare than alternative indices. In Chapter 2, which is joint work with Yoon J. Jo and David Weinstein, we estimate the impact of e-commerce on Japanese prices and welfare. First, we consider the possibility that e-commerce may have lowered prices by driving down the average prices of goods available online. Second, we compute the welfare gains due to the ability of e-commerce to enable consumers to purchase goods from other regions. Third, we compute the gains that arise through e-commerce's ability to arbitrage intercity price differences. We find that all three channels produced welfare gains in Japan, but our estimates suggest that the first and second channels are by far the most important, with welfare gains through these channels being eleven to sixteen times larger than through the price arbitrage channel. Overall, we find that increased inter-city arbitrage raised Japanese welfare by 0.12 percent, the gains due to new varieties available through online shopping raised welfare 0.7 percent, and the gains due to overall price reductions for goods available online raised welfare by 1 percent. In Chapter 3, which is joint work with Sakai Ando, we analyze the impact of dealer regulation on price quality (informativeness and volatility) and its implications for the welfare of market participants. We argue that although price informativeness, volatility, and the dealer's profitability all deteriorate, against conventional wisdom, other market participants are better off due to the dealer's risk-shifting motive. A static model is used to clarify the main intuition, and the robustness of the welfare results, as well as the fragility of the conventional wisdom about price quality, are discussed by incorporating dynamics and endogenizing information acquisition.