The geometry of the line and the circle has been used in economics for a long time to understand location choice and political positioning in democratic polity. This paper draws on some elementary ideas from geometry and game theory to extend some of the analysis to beyond lines and circles, to...

This paper, based on the introductory remarks made at the two-day conference on "The State of the Economy, the State of the World," is an idiosyncratic stocktaking of the trajectory of economics from Adam Smith to contemporary times, with special attention to the rise of development economics....

The paper provides a complete characterization of Nash equilibria for games in which n candidates choose a strategy in the form of a platform, each from a circle of feasible platforms, with the aim of maximizing the stretch of the circle from where the candidate’s platform will receive support...

There is a growing appreciation in economics that people have emotional vulnerabilities, commitments to social norms, and systematic irrationalities, which impact their decision making and choice in the marketplace. The flip side of this is that human beings are susceptible to being manipulated...

The many and varied crises in the world economy since 2007 seem to have different origins and diverse manifestations. This paper contends that there is however a structural shift beneath the global economy that is now reaching a critical mass, and that accounts for many of these crises, despite...

A frequent charge in foreign exchange markets in developing countries is that of manipulators being at work. Since to buy is to raise prices and to sell is to lower prices, the question that naturally arises is whether the widespread charge of market manipulation is valid. The paper shows that...

This paper analyzes the evolution of sovereign credit ratings in the wake of the global financial crisis by studying changes in actual, shadow, and relative ratings between 2008 and 2012. For countries that do not have a rating from the major rating agencies, shadow ratings are estimated as a...

The World Bank Group recently adopted two overarching goals -- the end of extreme, chronic poverty in the world by 2030 and the promotion of shared prosperity in every society. The paper examines the normative properties of these goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and their implications for...

The method of randomization has been a major driver in the recent rise to prominence of empirical development economics. It has helped uncover patterns and facts that had earlier escaped attention. But it has also given rise to heated debate and controversy. This paper evaluates the method of...

Much of game theory is founded on the assumption that individual players are endowed with preferences that can be represented by a real-valued utility function. However, in reality human preferences are often not transitive. This is especially true for the indifference relation, which can lead...