The Center "Leo Apostel"
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in collaboration with the Doctoral Programme of the VUB, invites 
everybody to the 20th of its interdisciplinary seminars in the series 
"Foundations". In this series CLEA invites scholars that are actively 
engaged in the research on the foundations of a particular discipline. 
Their lectures will always be directed to an interdisciplinary 
audience, and the discussions aim at confronting the foundations of 
the different disciplines.


           Distributional Preferences and Public Choice
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                     by Harold M. Hochman
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                  (Department of Economics,
              Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, USA)



Monday, 5 May 1997 at 6 p.m. in room B407 (building B, fifth floor)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Oefenplein 


About the lecture  
-----------------
Economics has always been linked with other subjects. In the last 
twenty years or so, however, economic models have been applied in a 
variety of areas, both by economists and by others. One of the first 
and most important of these applications is the field of public 
choice. Public choice theory is the application of economic theory to 
problems heretofore considered the province of political science. 
Before the 1960s, economists would define a general problem, find 
society s optimal solution, and investigate whether the free market 
would in principle reach that solution; if not, they would then infer 
that government action was necessary. Public choice theorists ask 
whether government could in principle reach the optimal solution, then 
go on to investigate what governments actually do. The usual criterion 
of performance used by economists for both markets and government is 
traditionally that of efficiency in resource allocation. Questions of 
the effects of government or market on the distribution of income were 
even considered by some economists to be out of bounds. Professor 
Hochman has devoted much of his career to exploring the economic 
theory of income distribution and redistribution by government and 
private activities. His special contribution has been to show that 
such activities can be evaluated according to the traditional 
efficiency criterion.

About the speaker
-----------------
Professor Harold M. Hochman is currently William E. Simon Professor of 
Political Economy, at Lafayette College, with which Vesalius College 
of the VUB is affiliated. He holds a BA, MA, and PhD from Yale 
University. He has held research positions at the US Treasury, 
Institute for Defense Analyses, and the Urban Institute. He taught at 
the University of Virginia, and has held visiting appointments at the 
University of Turin, LSE, Berkeley, and the Hebrew University of 
Jerusalem. He taught and directed a research center for many years at 
the City University of New York. His research specialities are income 
redistribution, public choice, and law and economics. He is author of 
many articles and books including "Pareto Optimal Redistribution" 
(with James D. Rodgers) and edited Redistribution through Public 
Choice. He is also editor of the Eastern Economic Review. Vesalius 
College has been privileged to have Prof. Hochman as Visiting 
Professor of Economics this spring.

The presentations with questions will last about an hour. Afterwards, 
an hour or more is reserved for an in-depth, group discussion of the 
topic. 

More info at the CLEA office: phone 02-644 26 77 or via the Web-page: 
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CLEA/


Upcoming event:

         The Godel Colloquium organised by CLEA May 22,
    with lecturers, Eva Colebunders and Jean Paul Van Bendegem.

        "Everything you always wanted to know about Godel
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                   but were afraid to ask."
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