I simply don't understand the mentality that leads people to move next door to music venues then push Council to shut them down. Even m...

I was on the CBC's The 180 on Sunday, discussing sugar taxes, fat taxes and paternalism . The audio's at the CBC site. While lots ...

If my lifestyle and leisure choices lead me to remit less to the government in taxes than I would have under alternative scenarios, have I i...

In my standard classroom account, a smelly person on the bus next to you isn't imposing an externality, or at least not one that can be ...

It is far too easy to come away from a lazy version of Econ 101 thinking that, because externalities are pervasive, the range of meliorative...

Are there really no bright line rules separating actions with external costs from those that are properly left entirely to individual choice...

The existence of an externality isn't sufficient basis for declaring market failure; indeed, optimal Coasean internalization pretty ofte...

Frances Woolley reports on problems in her students' understanding of Pigovean taxes. After a set-piece question asking students to cal...

Recall that in standard micro, a pecuniary externality is one that affects you through your budget constraint, if you follow the standard Bu...

Bill Kaye-Blake has migrated over to a new blog, Groping Towards Bethlehem . I'll comment on a few of his recent posts here; I'm sur...

Roommates impose costs on each other; the decision to flat with someone and the agreements governing that arrangement internalize those cost...

Coase taught us that externalities are two-sided: there can't be an externality if nobody's around to experience it. And so we seek ...

Suppose you started hanging out with Canadians. After a couple of months, a social scientist found that you had increased your likelihood of...

Theories of the household typically assume that the household heads make decisions on behalf not only of themselves but also on behalf of ot...

Eric wonders if there is a serious treatment of intrafamily effects and whether these should be accounted for as externalities. I don’t know...

If anyone knows of a serious treatment of intrafamily effects, I'd like to know about it. I'm reading through the Australian tax r...

Suppose that you care about reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Should you: a) implement a low carbon tax across all carbon dioxide emissio...

Economists tend to think that murder is a bad thing. Why? Well, despite the murderer presumably enjoying the act, his gain comes at a cost...

Brad suggests that utilitarianism has no way of sorting out how to deal with meddlesome preferences: Liberals and libertarians need to think...