Christian Seidl - Böcker

The standard rationality hypothesis is that behaviour can be represented as the maximization of a suitably restricted utility function. Though this utility maximization hypothesis is venerable, it remains an area of active research. Moreover, some fundamental conceptual problems remain unresolved, or at best have resolutions that are too recent to have achieved widespread understanding among social scientists. The main purpose of this text is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area.

The standard rationality hypothesis implies that individual behaviour can be represented as the maximization of a suitably restricted utility function. This hypothesis lies at the heart of a large body of economics, of course, but also in political science, ethics, and other major branches of the social sciences. Though this hypothesis of utility maximization deserves our continued respect, finding further refinements and developing new critiques remain areas of active research. The main purpose of the Handbook of Utility Theory is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area. The editors selected a list of topics that seemed ripe enough to be covered by review articles. Then they invited contributions from researchers whose expert work had come to their attention. So the list of topics and contributors is largely the editors' responsibility. Each contributor's chapter has been refereed, and revised according to the referees' remarks. Whereas Volume I of the Handbook of Utility Theory is largely concentrated on basic theory, the present volume is concerned with extensions and applications to other branches of economic theory. Taken together, these first two vo

The main purpose of the Handbook of Utility Theory is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area. The editors selected a list of topics that seemed ripe enough to be covered by review articles. Then they invited contributions from researchers whose expert work had come to their attention. So the list of topics and contributors is largely the editors' responsibility. Each contributor's chapter has been refereed, and revised according to the referee's remarks. Whereas Volume I [ISBN 0-7923-8174-2] of the Handbook of Utility Theory is largely concentrated on basic theory, Volume II [ISBN 1-4020-7963-X] is concerned with extensions and applications to other branches of economic theory. Taken together, these first two volumes contain all the purely theoretical material that the editors planned to cover. The chapters on experimental and empirical research on utility and the chapters on the history of utility theory will appear in Volume III.

The main purpose of the Handbook of Utility Theory is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area. The editors selected a list of topics that seemed ripe enough to be covered by review articles. Then they invited contributions from researchers whose expert work had come to their attention. So the list of topics and contributors is largely the editors' responsibility. Each contributor's chapter has been refereed, and revised according to the referees' remarks. Whereas Volume I of the Handbook of Utility Theory is largely concentrated on basic theory, the present volume is concerned with extensions and applications to other branches of economic theory. Taken together, these first two volumes contain all the purely theoretical material that the editors planned to cover. The chapters on experimental and empirical research on utility and the chapters on the history of utility theory will appear in Volume III.

Progressive Besteuerung kann nicht nur als ein Instrument zur Optimie- rung einer sozialen Wohlfahrtsfunktion gesehen werden, sondern auch als Ergebnis einer Minimierung bestimmter negativer Querbeziehungen von Menschen zueinander. Diese Deutung einer progressiven Einkommen- steuer bietet eine alternative Erklarung des Umverteilungsstaates. Hierbei ist das Menschenbild des Einzelnen dtisterer als das der neo- klassischen Tradition. Wird doch implizit angenommen, daB es ftir den Einzelnen nicht erwtinscht sei, wenn andere in einer Position sind, die er lieber hatte. Aber, woher kommt eigentlich dieser bias der Neoklas- sik, daB sie einseitig egozentrische Menschen in ihrem Menschenbild der Praferenzrelationen akzeptiert, daB sie auch noch bereit ist, alt- ruistische Menschen anzunehmen, aber eine psychologische Erscheinung wie den Neid verdrangen mochte? Moglicherweise liegt der Grund darin, daB man ein gewisses AusmaB an Nejd als leistungserhohende Triebkraft eines Menschen ansieht, also sogar positiv zu bewerten bereit ist.Dies andert aber nichts daran, daB zunehmender Neid die noch naher zu erklarende "Supernutzenfunktion" der einzelnen Individuen in einer Gesellschaft reduziert, so daB auch eine Gesellschaft mit hohem Sozial- produkt, aber sehr intensiven Neidbeziehungen insgesamt wohlfahrtsmaBig ungtinstiger dastehen kann als eine mit niedrigerem Sozialprodukt, aber Reduzierung der Neidbeziehungen.

​This is the first book that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with empirical data. While conventional measures of tax progression suffer from serious disadvantages for empirical analyses, this book extends uniform measures to progression comparisons of countries with different income distributions. Tax progression is analyzed in terms of Lorenz curve and Suits curve equivalents of net incomes and taxes. The authors derive six distinct definitions of the relation "is more progressive than", which are then utilized for an empirical analysis of 13 countries included in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). In two thirds of all international comparisons of tax progression, the authors report a clear ranking of the respective countries in terms of progression dominance. Tax based definitions of greater progressivity perform best. These observations are yet reinforced by statistical tests. The book also provides an account of the institutional background of the involved countries in order to facilitate the interpretation of the data. Moreover, the authors conduct intertemporal comparisons of tax progression for selected countries and perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to the parameterization of the equivalence scale.

​This is the first book that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with empirical data. While conventional measures of tax progression suffer from serious disadvantages for empirical analyses, this book extends uniform measures to progression comparisons of countries with different income distributions. Tax progression is analyzed in terms of Lorenz curve and Suits curve equivalents of net incomes and taxes. The authors derive six distinct definitions of the relation "is more progressive than", which are then utilized for an empirical analysis of 13 countries included in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). In two thirds of all international comparisons of tax progression, the authors report a clear ranking of the respective countries in terms of progression dominance. Tax based definitions of greater progressivity perform best. These observations are yet reinforced by statistical tests. The book also provides an account of the institutional background of the involved countries in order to facilitate the interpretation of the data. Moreover, the authors conduct intertemporal comparisons of tax progression for selected countries and perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to the parameterization of the equivalence scale.

Nobel laureate Sir John Hicks has with good reason called the third quarter of the 1 twentieth century the age of Keynes • Sir John nevertheless diagnosed a crisis of Keynesian economics even before this period had expired. But if only a few gifted scholars had foreseen the crisis of Keynesian economics before 1975, this year at least marked the ultimate disenchantment of Keynesian economics. Keynesian economic policy proved ineffective to cope with the economic challenges of the late seventies: unemployment, inflation, and stagnation of economic growth. Alarmed governments resorted to more and more intense remedies out of the Keynesian box of Pandora. But all they got was the creation of additional difficulties, aggravating the situation still more: soaring public debt, extraordinary balance-of-payments deficits, and economic instability. It had been argued until quite recently that capi­ talism could have survived only "in the oxygen tent of government deficit spend­ 2 ing ". But it has become patent since the mid-seventies that it is first and foremost the Keynesian oxygen tent that has produced the present embarrassment of capital­ ist economies. The present economic malaise in nearly all Western countries has accordingly led to considerable unrest in the economics profession. Somewhat reminiscent of the thirties, a feverish search for alternatives to the prevailing but insufficient econ­ omic doctrine has begun. Among the candidates to be screened, Schumpeterian economics takes a prominent place.

Hans-Werner Sinn, Munich, West Germany This book contains 15 papers presented at a conference in Neresheim, West Ger­ many, in June 1986. The articles were selected by anonymous referees and most of them have undergone substantial revisions since their presentation. The common topic is measurement of welfare, both from efficiency and from equity perspectives. For many economists, welfare is a diffuse, arbitrary and am­ biguous concept. The papers collected in this book show that this view is not justified. Though not beyond all doubt, welfare theory today is crisp and clear, offering fairly straightforward measuring concepts. It even comes up with numbers that measure society's advantage or disadvantage from specific policy options in monetary units. Politicians get something they can intuitively understand and argue with, and they do not have to be afraid that all this is metaphysics or the result of the scientist's personal value judgements. Some economists, whom I would classify as belonging to the "everything is optimal" school, would claim that providing politicians with numerical welfare measures is superfluous or even dangerous. The world is as it is, and any attempt to give policy advice can only make things worse. I do not share this view. There are good policies and there are bad ones, but it may not be easy to distinguish between them. There is a role for consulting politicians, Dr.