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Research in behavioral economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behavior that is closer to what individuals wish they were doing. The analysis of such corrective interventions, through taxes and subsidies, might be called ʺbehavioral public economics.ʺ However, such analysis, where the government has an objective function that is different from that of individuals, is not new in public economics. In these cases the government is said to be ʺnon-welfaristʺ in its objectives, and there is a long tradition of non-welfarist welfare economics, especially the analysis of optimal taxation and subsidy policy where the outcomes of individual behavior are evaluated using a preference function different from the one that generated the outcomes. The object of this paper is to first of all present a unified view of the non-welfarist optimal taxation literature and, secondly, to present behavioral public economics as a natural special case of this general framework.

RésuméL'auteur présente ici l'un des numéros de la Revue internationale du Travail publiés à l'occasion du 100e anniversaire de celle‐ci. Ce numéro rassemble dix articles publiés dans la Revue entre 1975 et 2016 et consacrés exclusivement à l'analyse de l'informalité. L'auteur commence par tracer le cadre analytique, avec les origines de la notion d'informalité, puis commente les articles de ce numéro du centenaire, en les situant dans la littérature sur le sujet par des références de portée illustrative plutôt qu'exhaustive. Il conclut en s'interrogeant sur ce que les prochaines décennies pourraient amener en termes d'analyse et d'apports politiques.

ResumenEste artículo es una introducción al presente número monográfico sobre la informalidad, inscrito en la colección del centenario de la Revista Internacional del Trabajo (RIT). Se recogen aquí diez artículos dedicados exclusivamente al análisis de la informalidad, que aparecieron en la RIT entre 1975 y 2016. La introducción se inicia con un marco analítico, seguido de un examen de los orígenes del discurso de la informalidad y una lectura crítica de los artículos seleccionados en su contexto bibliográfico, a través de una serie de referencias ilustrativas, y concluye mirando al futuro, a lo que nos depararán los próximos decenios de análisis y discurso de políticas.

AbstractThis article presents a Centenary Issue on Informality to mark the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Review (ILR). The issue brings together ten articles published in the ILR between 1975 and 2016 that are devoted exclusively to the analysis of informality. This introduction begins with an analytical framework, considers the origins of the informality discourse and then discusses the articles in this Centenary Issue, locating them in the broader literature through illustrative rather than comprehensive referencing. It concludes by looking ahead to what the coming decades of analysis and policy discourse may bring.

AbstractThe basic story of global inequality in the last three decades has been an overall decline, but one which is composed of quite intricate patterns. There has been a decline in between-country inequality as China and India have grown relative to the US and other rich countries. This has been accompanied by an increase in within-country inequality, but this is itself composed of rising inequality in some countries such as China, India, and the US, and declining inequality in other countries, including large economies in Latin America. Section II of the paper reviews these patterns, highlighting country diversity to make the central point that policy matters. Section III addresses a normative question—what relative weight should be given to within-country and between-country inequality in making an overall global assessment? This section brings on board recent philosophical discourse, including on inequality of opportunity in a global frame. Section IV returns to the 'policy matters' theme and takes up global constraints on national redistribution policy in a globalized world: for example, a race to the bottom on taxation to attract and keep capital and talent, and possible global institutional responses to alleviate these constraints.

This paper attempts to understand Asian Drama in the context of the development debates of its time, and in terms of the sensibilities that Gunnar Myrdal - the brilliant economic theorist and philosopher of knowledge, and Swedish politician - brought to the conceptualization of the problems and prospects of development. The paper covers: (1) what Gunnar Myrdal brought to the analysis of development from his long, varied, and distinguished academic and practitioner career; (2) the development terrain in the mid-twentieth century; and (3) how Asian Drama lay on that terrain and in the remaining years of Gunnar Myrdal's continued eventful life. The two central questions posed in the paper are: (1) How did Gunnar Myrdal's broad experience and perspective influence Asian Drama? (2) How did Asian Drama influence the development debate?