The equalization of profit rates across a multisector production economy subject to Nash bargaining over wages supports an industry wage structure like those that account for a large fraction of actual wage dispersion and a wage-wage-...-wage-profit surface on which the general profit rate can...

A number of theories (search and efficiency wages) have been developed, in part, to explain why identically able workers are often paid different wages. However, when there is a minimum wage, they do not explain the resulting ``spike" in the wage distribution. Our model's predictions are...

We examine how much of the observed wage dispersion among similar workers can be explained as a consequence of a lack of coordination among employers. To do this, we construct a directed search model with homogenous workers but where firms can create either good or bad jobs, aimed at either...

We provide a matching model where identical workers are embedded in ex- ante identical social networks. Job arrival rate is endogeneous and wages are bargained. We study the evolution of networks with time and characterize the equilibrium distribution of unemployment rates across networks. We...

Using a South African data set, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income – measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster - enters the...

We study certain classes of supermodular and submodular games which are symmetric with respect to material payoffs but in which not all players seek to maximize their material payoffs. Specifically, a subset of players have negatively interdependent preferences and care not only about their own...

A standard assumption in the economic approach to individual decision making is that people have independent preferences, that is, they care only about their absolute (material) payoffs. We study equilibria of the classic common pool resource extraction and public good games when some of the...