When contracts are incomplete, relationship-specific investments may be underprovided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. The authors find evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan. Using data from households cultivating multiple plots under...

Employing a view of culture as a communicative phenomenon involving discursive engagement, which is deeply influenced by social and economic inequalities, the authors argue that the struggle to break free of poverty is as much a cultural process as it is political and economic. In this paper,...

May 2000 - Some aspects of violent behavior are linked to economic incentives and deserve more attention from economists. In India, for example, domestic violence is used as a bargaining instrument, to extract larger dowries from a wife's family, after the marriage has taken place. Bloch and Rao...

"Most economists think of common property as physical-a body of water, a forest-and as bounded within geographic space. In this paper, building on work in social theory, the author argues that common property can also be social-defined within symbolic space. People can be bound by well-defined...