Artists face choices between the pecuniary benefits of selling to the market and the nonpecuniary benefits of creating to please their own tastes. We examine how changes in wages, lumpsum income, and capital-labor ratios affect the artist's pursuit of self-satisfaction versus market sales. Using our model of labor supply, we consider the economic forces behind the high/low culture split, why some artistic media offer greater scope for the avant-garde than others, why so many artists dislike the market, and how economic growth and taxation affect the quantity and form of different kinds of art.

I examine and test hypotheses for the differential performance of men and women in the arts. I consider whether observed outcomes are best accounted for by differing innate and genetic endowments across the sexes, variations in training opportunities, maternal responsibilities, or discrimination in the marketplace. More generally, I also consider how social mechanisms can give rise to observed patterns of unequal achievement. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996household behavior and family economics, time allocation, worker behavior, and employment determination, particular labor markets, discrimination, labor, demography, education, income, and wealth,

No abstract

I consider models of political failure based on self-deception. Individuals discard free information when that information damages their self-image and thus lowers their utility. More specifically, individuals prefer to feel good about their previously chosen affiliations and shape their worldviews accordingly. This model helps explain the relative robustness of political failure in light of extensive free information, and it helps explain the rarity of truth-seeking behavior in political debate. The comparative statics predictions differ from models of either Downsian or expressive voting. For instance, an increased probability of voter decisiveness does not necessarily yield a better result. I also consider political parties as institutions and whether political errors cancel in the aggregate. I find that political failure based on self-deception is very difficult to eliminate. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

We consider the well‐known theorem of Alchian and Allen that adding a per unit charge to the price of two substitute goods increases the relative consumption of the higher price good. The current literature misspecifies the conditions under which the theorem holds. When applying the theorem the fixed cost should be applied on a per unit basis, rather than in terms of an entry fee for consumption. We state the necessary conditions for the theorem to hold when the consumers are shipped to the goods.