We develop a tractable model of competition among motivated MFIs. We find that equilibria may or may not involve double-dipping (and consequently default), with there being double-dipping whenever the MFIs are very profit-oriented. Moreover, in an equilibrium with double-dipping, borrowers who...

Does the accuracy of verdicts improve or worsen if individual jurors on a panel are barred from deliberating prior to casting their votes? I study this question in a model where jurors can choose to exert costly effort to improve the accuracy of their individual decisions. I find that, provided...

We examine affirmative action, class-based (CAA), as well as identity-based (IAA), in an economy with income heterogeneity and diverse identity groups. We establish that with class-based affirmative action there exists an equilibrium that is colour-blind, i.e. the poor face the same standards...

It has long been recognized that some plaintiffs sue defendants out of malice, but malicious litigation has not been previously modeled in the law and economics literature. I construct a simple model of malicious litigation, wherein malice is defined by the plaintiff’s obtaining some utility...

I unify the following (1) men face paternity uncertainty while women do not face maternity uncertainty, (2) putative fathers and paternal kin care about true paternity, (3) paternity confidence is systematically lower in matrilocal cultures than in patrilocal ones, (4) inheritance tends to be...

In the traditional model of Bertrand price competition among symmetric firms, there is no restriction on the number of firms that are active in equilibrium. A symmetric equilibrium exists with the different firms sharing the market. I show that this does not hold if we preserve the symmetry...

Suppose paying attention during jury trials is costly, but that jurors do not pool information (as in contemporary Brazil, or ancient Athens). If inattentive jurors are as likely to be wrong as right, I find that small jury panels work better as long as identical jurors behave symmetrically. If...

This is the first paper to incorporate malice into the Rubinstein alternating offers bargaining game. Initially, I examine outcomes with one-sided malice, allowing one of the bargaining players to be malicious in the sense that he obtains a positive payoff in every period in which the other...

We analyze affirmative action in the presence of income heterogeneity, with the target group containing a creamy layer, as well as poorer members. We find that a move from identity to class-based affirmative action would affect the creamy layer and the poorer members of the target group...