We consider a model of international trade with increasing returns in a non-traded input into industry, “infrastructure”, and show that the nature of equilibrium depends crucially on whether the infrastructure provider acts in a “naïve” manner – akin to a Level 1 agent in a cognitive...

We show how an interaction between the skewness of the sex ratio and the jump in divorce rates after a liberalization in divorce laws can obtain in a model of marriage market matching with non-transferable utility. This model is partly motivated by a significant cross-country correlation between...

Economists have modeled inheritance norms assuming the pattern of post-marital residence is exogenous. We model the co-evolution of these two institutions, examining how patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal exogamy reinforced each other in a patrilineal-patrilocal equilibrium. We also derive...

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...

We examine how increased competition among motivated MFIs impacts the poorest borrowers’ access to microfinance. We find that it depends on inequality, technology and the possibility of double-dipping (borrowing from several sources). Without competition, even a motivated MFI may lend to the...

Many men invest in their sisters’ children instead of their wives’. Existing theories addressing such behavior depend on the level of paternity probability in such men’s societies being implausibly low. I link this anthropologically observed investment behavior with the experimentally...

I unify the following (1) men face paternal uncertainty while women do not face maternal 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...

We develop a tractable model of competition among socially motivated MFIs, so that the objective functions of the MFIs put some weight on their own clients' utility. We nd that the equilibrium involves double-dipping, i.e. borrowers taking multiple loans from different MFIs, whenever the MFIs...

I show how an interaction between the imbalance of the sex ratio and the jump in divorce rates after a liberalization in divorce laws can obtain in a model of marriage market matching with non-transferable utility. If sex ratios are more unbalanced, the size of the jump in divorce rates...