Households, markets and public choice

Any Choice for Vulnerable Households? Lessons from Choice-Based Lettings

Supporters of choice-based lettings frequently emphasise the principles of customer empowerment, but does this extend to meaningful choice for vulnerable households? The paper focuses initially on the debate on ‘need’ versus ‘choice’ and applies this to vulnerable households. A brief outline is then provided on how choice-based lettings systems in Britain and The Netherlands have attempted to e...

Plastic wastes separation practice and disposal mechanism by households, hospitals, markets and waste management body

This study was carried out to reveal the plastic wastes separation practice and disposal mechanism as well as awareness of the negative impact of plastic wastes on the environment, in Makurdi area of Benue State, Nigeria. Questionnaires were administered to 468 individual respondents in 6 sub-locations of the city. Inquisition was also made from 10 hospitals, 6 market centers and the waste mana...

Information and Public Choice

Happiness and Public Choice

Measuring individual welfare using data on reported subjective well-being has made great progress. It offers a new way of confronting public choice hypotheses with field data, e.g. with respect to partisan preferences on unemployment and inflation or rents in the public bureaucracy. Insights from public choice also help to assess the role of happiness measures in public policy. We emphasize tha...

Paternalism and public choice

There is an apparent contradiction in the economic approach to government policy. On one hand, neoclassical economists are champions of ‘consumer sovereignty’. This is the idea that individuals are the best judges of what is in their interests and should be able to make their own decisions. For example, economists would tend to oppose a regulation that required airbags to be installed in new ca...