Investopedia contributors come from a range of backgrounds, and over 25 years there have been thousands of expert writers and editors who have contributed. Robert Kelly is managing director of XTS ...

Welfare economics examines the allocation of resources and its impact on individual and social well‐being. Rooted in classical notions of Pareto efficiency, the field has evolved to encompass a broad ...

James Buchanan wrote "An Economic Theory of Clubs" and invented clubs to support a form of welfare economics in which there is no social welfare function (SWF) and individual utility functions cannot ...

The introduction of subsidies into insurance rates constitutes a type of quasi-welfare payment but leaves open the question of whether social welfare is increased, decreased, or unchanged by the ...

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded Monday to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström for their work in contract theory — developing a framework to understand agreements like insurance contracts, ...

It’s an old question: Why are the poor poor? In particular, why would some people choose not to work, or to spend what little money they have unwisely? Some experts say the poor are mentally ill or ...