The formal structure of a decision problem in any area can be put into four parts: (1) the choice of an objective function defining the relative desi… - Kenneth Arrow

There are many other organizations beside the government and the firm. But all of them, whether political party or revolutionary movement, university or church, share the common characteristics of the need for collective action and the allocation of resources through nonmarket methods.

Studying oneself is not the most comfortable of enterprises. One is caught between the desire to show oneself in the best possible light and the fear of claiming more than one’s due.

For the voucher system to work, it would be necessary to have informed parents. One cannot be dogmatic without empirical evidence, but I would be surprised if the average parent has the time or patience or competence to digest the relevant information. Indeed, one wonders where the information is to come from and in what form it should exist. Do we use test scores, themselves affected by the selection processes of the students? Impressions of individual teachers or of the physical appearance of the school will tend to dominate.