The allocation of a government budget between a public good and transfers is modeled under different systems of government. The relatively even distribution of political power among groups in a democracy favors spending on nonexclusive public goods. The more concentrated pattern of political power in a dictatorship favors spending on transfers targeted to powerful groups. The hypothesis on publ...

Most of the legal, philosophical, and social-science thinking about privacy emphasizes its value to the individual with less attention to its value to society. Professors Fairfield and Engel join a growing number of privacy scholars who are probing privacy’s value to society and policy options to protect privacy’s social value. They signal its social importance and also underscore weaknesses in...