The distribution of income in a despotic society

A distribution of income between rulers and subjects can be derived as an equilibrium of violence, rather than from considerations of marginal products of owned factors of production. Society is organized in ranks, and the occupants of each rank are provided with incomes just sufficient that obedience is preferable to rebellion. To incorporate such considerations into a model, it is necessary to recognize phenomena that are normally excluded from economic analysis: combat, the mortality rate (from natural causes and from violence) as a component of the utility function, and a rudimentary technology of control.     

Reintegrating seriously violent and personality-disordered offenders from a supermaximum security institution into the general offender population

Offenders who have committed serious violent acts while incarcerated are often segregated and housed in supermaximum security facilities. Given the highly restricted regime under which they are detained, it is often difficult to decide if they are safe enough to be discharged. However, there is a need to reintegrate them into the general offender population in a lower security institution for humane, correctional, and financial reasons. We propose a transitional strategy to facilitate their reintegration by way of a maximum-security step-down treatment-oriented facility within which both their security requirements and treatment needs could be adequately met. The present study reports the results of such an approach. More than 80% of the offenders (n = 31) were reintegrated into a lower-security facility without relapsing and being returned to the supermaximum institutions within a follow-up period of 20 months. They also have lower institutional offense rate postreintegration compared to prereintegration.     

Assessing the citizen – candidate model

Citizen–candidate models postulate a politics without political parties. Any citizen may become a candidate for office. A winner is chosen from among the candidates by voting with ties broken by the flip of a coin. All voters have preferences over a set of policies. The winning candidate adopts his preferred policy. It is proved on certain assumptions that there exists an equilibrium in these models and that the equilibrium is efficient. The significance of the proof is tested here with reference to the paradox of voting, the exploitation problem, the transposition of the Nash equilibrium from markets to politics, and constitutional constraints. The quest for a political equilibrium leads in the end to the recognition of a minimal rock-bottom requirement for cooperation and negotiation in democratic government.     

The Colour of the Judge's Eyes: Efficiency as a Criterion for the Legislature and for the Courts

Public Choice - Should courts adjudicate to promote efficiency in theeconomy, or should courts be content to apply the lawas they find it? The literature of law and economicshas much to say about...     

Bargaining and voting

Government by majority rule voting is a mixture of voting and bargaining. Bargaining among people with moderately different objectives is indispensable for the passage of laws and the formation of public policy. Little of the nation’s business could be transacted without an ability on the part of the legislators and members of political parties to strike bargains, but that same ability to strike bargains makes possible the exploitation of minorities by majorities which, beyond some limit, destroys democratic government. Rules and customs are designed to foster bargaining in the one context and to thwart bargaining in the other.     

Victimization,rent-seeking and just compensation

When should government compensate citizens for harm inflicted by public policy? In practice, all public policy is harmful to somebody, even when it is beneficial to society as a whole. The common view in the legal profession is that a fuzzy but serviceable line can be drawn between “taking” which should be compensated and the proper exercise of the “policy power” where no compensation is warranted. Recently this view has been challenged by some authors who argue that harm to victims of socially-advantageous public policy should never be compensated, and by others who argue that compensation is almost always warranted. The latter would go so far as to proscribe all redistribution of income as a “taking” from the well-to-do. This paper is a defense of the common view against both challenges. The key to the problem is the distinction between unalterable risk and the risk of victimization of citizens by the government, giving rise to rent-seeking and a general disorganization of society.     

Thai interest rates∗

Using conventional assumptions of price control by buffer devices, several aspects of control of trade in cocoa by buffer funds, buffer stocks and export quotas are explored with the provisions of the Draft International Cocoa Agreement in mind. Analysis of revenue and price effects of these devices is facilitated by drawing on literature concerning cocoa market parameters.

Expanding the short‐run diagrammatic analysis of buffer funds by Snape and Yamey, possible revenue effects under optimum marketing‐board farmer prices are shown when (a) the farmer price is held constant for two years and shifts in demand and supply are experienced and (b) farmer price is allowed to fluctuate from one year to the next according to optimum considerations (under constraints regarding the maximum and minimum farmer price). Surpluses and export proceeds are shown to increase with a farmer price (net of transportation costs) equal to or lower than the world price. Control, however, may destabilize export proceeds and world price.

Use of proposed buffer stock and export quota devices in a market already controlled by buffer funds is shown, under conditions specified, to have uncertain effects on export proceeds. Buffer funds may reduce and destabilize producer country proceeds while export quotas have the opposite effect. A buffer stock in a market already controlled by a buffer fund interested in maximizing short‐run export proceeds may not, with cocoa market parameters hypothesized, be an improvement over the buffer fund during years for which the ceiling price is to be supported.