Petur O. Jonsson

The economics of spam and the context and aftermath of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

The paper reviews the background and the aftermath of the CAN-SPAM Act. The Act banned a variety of deceptive practices, but it also pre-empted the passage of stricter state laws that would have outlawed spam altogether. The nature of spam has changed since the passage of the Act. The most benign of the spammers have been reined in while those operating outside the law have grown ever more dangerous and malevolent.

Networks, culture, transaction costs and discrimination

Starts out with a survey of various formal theories that have focused on discrimination in the labor market. Argues that Becker’s traditional taste for discrimination model, the various statistical discrimination models and the new cultural communication cost models ultimately yield analytically and observationally equivalent predictions. In particular, these models all imply that we may find occupational segregation across firms. This, in turn, suggests that it is not easy to identify the true causes of discriminatory wage differentials in the labor market and thus that we may have a very hard time sorting out which of these models applies best. Finally, speculates, in the context of Kremer’s model of economic growth, about how changing technologies and structure of production could possibly exacerbate the inequalities predicted by these models of discrimination in the labor market.

On meta-preferences and incomplete preference maps

The paper suggests that a consumers specific preferences for goods are derived from underlying meta-preferences. In this context, the paper demonstrates that preferences for goods must always be incomplete. Hence, the problem of mapping out preferences should be considered an integral part of the consumers basic optimization problem. In turn, this means that learning and innovation must play a role in the consumption process and that observed choices do not always reveal a consumers underlying preferences. Some choices are made simply to try out new things and, whenever the consumer does not like the results, a choice will not be repeated. Accordingly, one cannot always rely on revealed preferences to predict future behavior.

Some Thoughts on Hamill, the Two Kingdoms, and the Ethics and Logic of Higher Tax Rates and Redistribution

According to Susan Hamill, Judeo-Christian ethics call on us to raise marginal tax rates. Hamill bases this on the belief that higher taxes will yield more income redistribution to the poor and make them better off. Whether or not tax policy ought to be based on religious criteria is beyond the scope of this article. What the article argues instead is that Hamill has an imperfect understanding of both ethical reasoning and of the relationship between taxes and the welfare of the poor. The problems with her ethical reasoning start out with the canard that higher taxes represent simple self-sacrifice. This fallacy allows her to blithely disregard any ethical problems associated with the coercive nature of taxes. Hamill goes on to argue that there is no conflict between her call for higher taxation in the name of Christianity and Boyd’s call for Christians to focus on their own actions rather than on amassing power to coerce others. After considering Hamills ethical reasoning, this article points out that there is no clear positive relationship between higher tax rates and the welfare of the poor in the first place. For one thing, the actual allocation of government expenditures is influenced by a number of stakeholders and is not directly tied to current tax revenues. More importantly, higher tax rates are associated with a variety of disincentives for work and production. This may in turn slow down economic growth and thus reduce the future well-being of everyone, including the poor.