This paper considers the problem faced by a political authority that has to design a legislative mechanism that guarantees the selection of policies that are stable, efficient, and inclusive in the sense of strategically protecting minority interests. Experimental studies suggest that some of...

We investigate a setting in which members of a population, bifurcated into a majority and a minority, transact with randomly matched partners. All members are uniformly altruistic, and each transaction can be carried out cooperatively or through a market mechanism, with cooperative transactions...

We develop a dynamic model that can explain identity switching activities among a stereotyped population, such as passing and selective out-migration, based on the group reputation model developed in Kim and Loury (2008). The more talented members of the population, who gain more by separating...

A model is developed in which parents choose the language or languages in which their children are brought up. Their choice of language community into which children are socialized depends both on the practical value of the language as a means of communication and on the emotional attachment of...

The concept of testimonial injustice, due to Miranda Fricker, captures cases where structural prejudices about a person’s social identity lead people to assign lower credibility to her utterances. On Fricker’s account, these prejudices have to be false. This paper considers testimonial...

In a laboratory investigation of a principal-agent relationship with moral hazard, we analyze strategically induced identity-based discrimination. We find that when principals use the sanctioning tools at their disposal in an outcome-contingent way, they attribute good outcomes more readily to...

Civil wars are intricate social, political and psychological phenomena. However, economics can offer analytical insights which are useful alongside the more conventional approach of case-studies. Indeed, the policy conclusions drawn from economic analysis sometimes cast doubt on conventional...

This paper examines the following question: how do representational concerns affect a firm's hierarchical structure? Employers, facing a population of agents who can be distinguished by their productivity and identity, seek to assign them to positions in the organizations hierarchy that differ...