Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Hans Georg Petersen Title: Redistribution and the Efficiency Abstract: Redistribution and the Efficiency (by Hans Georg Petersen) - ABSTRACT: The trade-off between efficiency and justice is one of the most important political conflicts in democratic societies. However, a clear definition of justice is helpful to come to a social consensus on a quasi-optimal mix of both important societal targets. While justice of ability is fully in accordance with economic efficiency, the justice of needs concept requires a more careful analytical investigation. Justice of needs and combating poverty is always connected with income redistribution; in case of altruism the redistribution often takes place on a voluntary basis, which is obviously positive from a social perspective and even trouble-free for economic efficiency. In case of egoistic sentiments, voluntary redistribution becomes questionable and the state as redistributive agent begins to play an important role. Whereas altruism and egoism overwhelmingly will lead to a societal agreement on anti-poverty strategies, envy as a negative interdependency in between the individual utility functions plays a harmful and dangerous role for a social consensus in democratic societies. Classification-JEL: Keywords: Note: Pages: Volume: 2004/82 Year: 2004 Issue:82 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=22343&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/Ste2004-082001 Number: 1 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Sergio Bruno Title: La concorrenza come viaggio esplorativo nell'ignoto: dai giochi di prezzo alle azioni sperimentali Abstract: Competition as a Trip to the Unknown: from Pricing Games to Experimental Actions (by Sergio Bruno) - ABSTRACT: Competitive interactions are commonly regarded as equilibrium quantities and prices, with prices close to costs. This analysis fails explaining how different markets and modern competitive strategies emerge, inconsistently with managerial and historical perspectives. It is argued first that the poorness of results and the compression of prices to costs are due to artificial constraints put upon choice sets and to the failure to fully exploiting the underlying game interactions. Under appropriate analytical conditions prices can be shown to likely exceed costs in pure contestable, perfect and monopolistic competition markets. In the second part rivalry as exploratory sequences in the sense of Hayek is deepened. Companies? strategies are experimental actions that create information and affect companies? choice sets, game rules and the environment itself. The success of innovative bets depends on how other actors change. Intrinsically good or optimal actions cannot be defined. Sunkness is a pervasive conceptual category. Classification-JEL: Keywords: Note: Pages: Volume: 2004/82 Year: 2004 Issue:82 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=22344&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/Ste2004-082002 Number: 2 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ferruccio Marzano Title: Open and closed economic theories Abstract: Open and Closed Economic Theories (by Ferruccio Marzano) - ABSTRACT: This paper proposes a new way to look at the deployment of modern economic theories, since A. Smith, as well as of actual practice as far as economic actions are concerned. On the one hand, there are those theories and actions which may be regarded as open, that is to say that they are incomplete and need to be completed on the basis of the value judgements subscribed to by each author, that are to be taken as external postulates or principles. On the other hand, there are those theories and actions which may be regarded as closed, that is to say that they are thought of as complete in themselves, so that, once certain value judgements are subscribed to by any author, there may well be the case of a clash between conclusions derived at from a reasoning which is internal to any theory and action and those conclusions that are derived at from external postulates or principles. Moreover, since any of the two groups of economic theories and actions may be combined with any of two groups of ethical postulates or principles, such as subjective vs. objective moral values, it follows that an option may be made among four different possibilities. Finally, it will be argued for the superiority of the combination open economic theories (and practice) and objective moral values over any other of the three remaining options. Classification-JEL: Keywords: Note: Pages: Volume: 2004/82 Year: 2004 Issue:82 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=22345&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/Ste2004-082003 Number: 3 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Vinicio Guidi Title: Modelli di equilibrio economico generale e beni infiniti: una rassegna Abstract: General Equilibrium Models with Infinite Goods: A Survey (by Vinicio Guidi) - ABSTRACT: In the last thirty years the literature on general equilibrium has focused on the existence of a competitive equilibrium in an infinite dimensional setting. The canonical models take into consideration commodities which may differ in the location or time at which they are consumed or the state of the world in which they become available. Peleg, Yaari and Bewley were the first to solve the existence problem in different spaces and using different methods. The analysis was later generalised in many directions, till Aliprantis and Brown recognised most of spaces employed were Riesz spaces and so they introduced lattice methods in economic literature. Thanks to these results, Mas-Colell and Richard were able to free the demonstration by specific space assumptions, elaborating an abstract unifying framework. In the survey, we focus on exchange economies summarising the mathematical structures and the basic economic issues of the literature. Classification-JEL: Keywords: Note: Pages: Volume: 2004/82 Year: 2004 Issue:82 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=22346&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/Ste2004-082004 Number: 4