We generalize endogenous growth models, which often assume a closed-economy, to allow for international borrowing and lending. We incorporate a prominent feature of global financial markets, that the marginal cost of borrowing facing a small open economy is dependent on the “country risk” as...

Since 1986, Vietnam has moved from a centrally planned towards a market-oriented system through several major economic and trade reforms. First positive results of the reform process became visible in the early 1990s when poverty declined significantly. The Vietnamese agricultural sector has...

We model group formation as a response to relative deprivation. We employ two measures of relative deprivation. We show that in the case of each of these measures the process of deprivation-induced self-selection into groups reaches a steady state, and that the steady-state distribution differs...

This paper argues that an increase in the inequality of wealth prompts a stronger quest for status that in turn fosters the accumulation of wealth. It proposes a measure for an individual's want of social status. For a given level of a population's wealth, the corresponding aggregate measure of...

A rationale for providing support to the farm sector in the course of economic development and structural change is a growing gap between the incomes of non-agricultural workers and the incomes of farmers. Drawing on a model that enables us to analyze the level of social stress experienced by...

Acknowledging individuals' distaste for low relative income renders trade less appealing when trade is viewed as a technology that integrates economies by merging separate social spheres into one. We define a “trembling trade” as a situation in which gains from trade are overtaken by losses...

The water-energy-food security nexus concept is a widely recognized analytical approach to consider and achieve sustainable development goals. However, the water-energy-food security nexus concept has mostly been analyzed at higher scales in a top-down manner, while examples of bottom-up and...

On-farm production diversity of smallholder farmers can improve the nutrition security of the household. The objective is to determine the significance and relevance of this relationship by considering the different degrees of separability between both the commercial and consumptive production...

We study policies that are aimed at retaining a migrant workforce in a Gulf State while introducing a tax on migrant earnings. We single out Qatar as a case study. We consider two types of migrants: target migrants, and non-target migrants. If migrants are target migrants, we show that in order...