In this paper, I make an attempt to understand the efficacy of some of the current fiscal stimuli being implemented to deal with the ongoing economic disaster precipitated by COVID-19. The focus is on pecuniary externalities working through the demand side, for they seem crucial for recovery. I...

Why is religiosity in contemporary America exceptionally high relative to those in other rich countries? I develop a simple theory that hinges on the sense of security of immigrant-identity, which is informed by both religion and ethnicity. Commitments to religion and to ethnicity are...

We argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of India because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women. We set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste-based status...

We offer a theory of gender differences in parental altruism based on the asymmetry that female fertility is constrained but male fertility is relatively unconstrained. Modelling human preferences as having been shaped during the Pleistocene, we derive evolutionarily stable, co-evolved male and...

We examine how preferences evolve by natural selection in a competitive environment similar to that characterizing much of our evolutionary past. We find that the evolutionarily stable preferences in this context exhibit a concern not only for absolute payoffs but also for relative payoffs, and...

Religion, ethnicity, and political ideology all lend themselves to the perpetration of mass atrocities by creating a sense of identity that sets up an Us/Them dichotomy. Atrocities here are seen as arising from the motive of acquiring territory but augmented by other-regarding preferences that...

Books reviewed: Joseph E. Stiglitz and Shahid Yusuf (eds) Rethinking the East Asian Miracle Hal Hill and Jo-o M. Saldanha, East Timor: Development Challenges for the World's Newest Nation Nat J. Colletta, Teck Ghee Lim and Anita Kelles-Viitanen (eds), Social Cohesion and Conflict Prevention in...

This paper attempts to assess the relative contributions of the farm and non-farm sectors to the increase in agricultural wage earnings in India between 1983-1999. Cross-section analysis of NSS data for 1983 and 1993 confirm the importance of farm productivity growth, consistent with the...