Individuals often deem market transactions in sex, human organs and surrogacy, among others, repugnant. Repugnance norms can be explained by appealing to social-status concerns. We study an exchange economy in which agents abhor consumption dominance: one’s social status is compromised if one consumes less of every good than someone else does. Dominance may be forestalled by partitioning goods into submarkets and then invoking the repugnance norms that proscribe trade across these submarkets. Dominance may also be forestalled if individuals strategically ‘overconsume’ some goods, interpreted as emergent status goods. When equilibria are multiple, there is scope for welfare-enhancing policies that coordinate on status goods.

Australian social policy has seen apparently contradictory developments over the period of economic restructuring. Social spending has increased based on a highly redistributive model while inequality has grown. This article explores the relationship between Australia’s experience of economic restructuring and the political dynamics of an emerging ‘dual welfare state’. Importantly, the article argues that Australian reformers did not reject the state per se, nor egalitarianism as an objective. Instead, reform sought to combine greater competition with compensation, generating larger inequalities in market incomes alongside growing social spending. The article explores how Labor combined neoclassical ideas about competition with a commitment to a ‘small state’ version of social democracy. This did moderate inequalities through the period of restructuring, but it also altered the dynamics of political contestation. The article provides two typologies to understand this political dynamic, arguing forms of marketisation opened the door to a political contest over the nature, rather than the extent, of public provision, while the model of targeting reinforced paternalist tendencies inherent in neoliberal reform.

Environmental economics has made it possible to estimate prices for air pollution externalities. However, these values are rarely observed in emissions trading markets. Moreover, market outcomes show prices persistently remain below expectations and frequently fall over time. Low allowance prices may appear virtuous, but often reflect poor market design that does not anticipate interaction with other policies, and may undermine confidence in market-based approaches to environmental policy. This paper surveys emissions markets and factors influencing prices, and concludes with a discussion of how market design can anticipate and remedy the strong tendency for low prices.

This study investigates consumer preferences for a marketing system that improves integration of farmers into a local food system. Attribute-based methods are used to estimate consumer willingness to pay for a locally grown product that is bundled with a local food bank (LFB) donation. Estimates reveal that, on average, households are willing to pay 11% more for locally grown relative to nonlocal agricultural products. When the locally grown product attribute is combined with a donation to support a LFB, the premium nearly doubles. Results suggest that the proposed system could provide resources to strengthen local food distribution networks.