In recent years, taxation has been one of the most prominent and controversial topics in economic policy. Taxation has been a principal issue in every presidential election since 1980—with a large tax cut as a winning issue in 1980, a pledge of "Read my lips: no new taxes" in the 1988 campaign, and a statement that "It's your money" providing an enduring image of the 2000 campaign. Taxation was also the subject of major, and largely inconsistent, policy changes. It remains a source of ongoing debate... MORE

In 1998, Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize "for his contributions to welfare economics." Much of Sen's early work was on issues raised by Kenneth Arrow's "impossibility theorem." Arrow had shown, much more generally than Condorcet had in 1785, that majority rules often lead to intransitivities. A majority may prefer a to b and b to c, but it does not follow, as it does for an individual, that the majority prefers a to c. If the majority prefers c to a, then there is an intransitivity. With coauthor Prasanta Pattanaik, Sen specified certain conditions that eliminate intransitivities. He did later work on his own that resulted in a 1970 book that added to Arrow's initial insights. One major theme was his skepticism about utilitarianism. The Nobel committee cited this work in awarding the prize. MORE