Welfare Economics and Second-Best Theory

Richard Markovits holds a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics and an L.L.B. from Yale Law School.  He currently holds the John B. Connally Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School. He has taught at several other law schools and economics faculties in both the United States and Germany.  From 1981-1983, he was Co-Director of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Wolfson College, Oxford.  His research chiefly focuses on Welfare Economics, Industrial Organization, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Law.

• Introduction to The General Theory of Second Best, Its Central Implications, and the Appropriate Way to Respond to It.- The Economics Profession’s Responses to The General Theory of Second Best: Descriptions and Critiques.- The Concept of “the Impact of a Choice (or Natural Event) on Economic Efficiency”.- “First-Best,” “Second-Best,” and “Third-Best” Definitions, Elaborations, and Other Economists’ Usages.- The Symbols for Various Pareto Imperfections, Private and Allocative Concepts, Categories of Resource-Uses, and Categories of Resource Allocations.- The Vocabulary and Symbols of Distortion Analysis.- Analyses of Various Step-Wise Monopoly Distortions.- The Various Non-Monopoly Step-Wise Private-Benefit, Private-Cost, and Profit Distortions.- Some Negative and Positive Implications of the TBLE Distortion-Analysis Protocol for Economic-Efficiency Prediction/Post-Diction.- The Approach That Would Be TBLE for a Government to Take to Economic-Efficiency Prediction/Post-diction—the Restof the Story.- Conclusion.