In real-life, individuals are often assigned to binary treatments according to existing treatment protocols.  Such protocols, when designed with “taste-based†motives, would be productively inefficient in that the expected returns to treatment for the marginal treatment recipient...

One of the core goals of a universal health care system is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic status.  We test for discrimination using patient waiting times for non-emergency treatment in public hospitals.  Waiting time should reflect patients' clinical need with...

We study evolutionary dynamics in assignment games where many agents interact anonymously at virtually no cost.  The process is decentralized, very little information is available and trade takes place at many different prices simultaneously.  We propose a completely uncoupled learning process...

With more than ten million children out of school, Nigeria is the country furthest away from universal primary education.  Low access to school is concentrated in the north of the country where a tradition of religious education has been seen as both a constraint and an opportunity.  This...

During the final years of the Multifiber Agreement the US imposed strict import quotas on Chinese apparel while it gave African apparel duty-and quota-free access.  The combination of these policies led to a rapid but ephemeral rise of African exports.  In this paper we argue that the African...

This paper investigates discount pricing, the common marketing practice whereby a price is listed as a discount from an earlier, or regular, price.  We discuss two reasons why a discounted price - as opposed to a mearly low price - can make a rational consumer more willing to purchase the...

In recent years bonuses tied to performance have become commonplace in banks and other financial institutions; indeed they now constitute a major part of employee compensation.  The practice was originally justified by academic work on principal-agent contracts, which argued that performance...

In this paper we analyse the relative importance of individual ability and labour market institutions, including public sector wage setting and trade unions, in determining earnings differences across different types of employment. To do this we use the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study data...

Consumer leverage can generate financial crises characterized by increased bankruptcy, tightened credit access and reduced demand for goods.  This paper embeds financial frictions in the mortgage contracts of homeowners within a two-sector economy to show that even at moderate initial levels,...

Vocational training systems differ markedly between countries. A model of firm-based human capital investment predicts equilibria characterised by particular patterns of training and job-to-job mobility, consistent with observed cross-country differences. Incentives to invest in human capital...