Suchergebnisse

This paper provides an overall framework for understanding and interpreting the literature on the social costs of alcohol. The paper discusses several philosophical and practical perspectives that motivate different types of cost studies. The two broad motivating perspectives are the public health and the economic viewpoint; each have several subtypes. The types of cost studies are discussed along with findings of key studies. The perspective, type of study, and important findings are evaluated, and challenges for future research are discussed. Although this paper draws on the economics literature, it is written for the non-economist.

When an individual's reported preference scheme makes a difference to the selection of a policy, that individual's report imposes a cost on the rest of society because the selected policy would have been different had the individual's reported preference been different. In a paper in Economic Notes, Giacomo Bonanno argues that the penalty assessed by the pivotal mechanism is not equal to the cost that the individual's participation imposes on the rest of society. This note argues to the contrary, by presenting what we believe to be the correct definition of social cost.(J.E.L: D62, D71, H41).

AbstractCoase always expressed dissatisfaction with neo-classical economics and advocated for a new approach. Rather than using toy mathematical models built from unrealistic, idealized assumptions, Coase preferred to study real-world contexts, including actual legal cases. He demonstrated the utility of his approach in 'The Problem of Social Cost'. Yet almost all of Coase's contemporaries completely ignored, Coase's call for a new approach and his sustained use of legal cases to illustrate his arguments and to situate his analysis in reality. In this paper, we show that the profession interpreted Coase's seminal article exactly the opposite of what he had intended, and reduced his analytical contributions to a toy model of the exact sort he was criticizing. This ironic history of the most cited article both in law and in economics helps us understand the development of ideas within both fields and how disciplinary blinders shape intellectual progress.