D Microeconomics

摘要

Summary and assessment. Imagine a firm going bankrupt and the firm's liquidation value is to be divided between the creditors. Each cred-itor has a claim (the amount of money that the firm owed him), but the endowment (the amount to be divided) is insufficient to satisfy all claims. How should the endowment be divided? This is the "claims problem." Other applications of the formal model are to rationing (each claim being the demand), the allocation of emission permits (each claim being the current emission), and taxation (each claim being the pre-tax income and the endowment being the total income after tax). Coming up with systematic ways to solve the claims problem-the division rules-is the subject oi William Thomson's book.