Excessive preoccupation with self-image has been pinpointed as a factor contributing to the proliferation of food disorders, especially among young women. To provide an economic basis for this argument this paper models how ‘self-image’ and ‘other people’s appearance’ influence...

With over a billion people in China, the issue of cultivated land conversion is extremely important both in terms of food security and environmental sustainability. This paper investigates the relationship between cultivated land, environment, and food security in China; and seeks to identity the...

Annual food production is enough to feed the 6.9 billion people in the world today. However, access and distribution of food in order that people do not have to die due to hunger continues to remain elusive even in the 21st century making food security one of the major global challenges. The...

We examine the driving forces behind farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change, and the impact of adaptation on farmers’ food production. We investigate whether there are differences in the food production functions of farm households that adapted and those that did not adapt. We...

We study a contracting model with unforeseen contingencies in which the court is an active player. Ex-ante, the contracting parties cannot include the risky unforeseen contingencies in the contract they draw up. Ex-post the court observes whether an unforeseen contingency occurred, and decides...

This paper considers the impact of financial contracting on growth by exploring a model where entrepreneurs initially do R&D but subsequently need both outside investors to provide funds for capital investments and outside mangers to operate the firm efficiently some time after assets are in...

This paper studies the role of intrinsic motivation, reputation, and reciprocity in driving open source software innovation. Unlike previous literature based on survey data, we exploit the observed pattern of contributions - the .revealed preference. of developers - to infer the underlying...

Weak enforcement of international contracts can substantially reduce international trade. We develop a model where agents build reputations to overcome the difficulties that this institutional failure causes in a context of incomplete information. The model describes the interplay between...

We embed a simple contracting model with ex-ante investments in which there is scope for Court intervention in a full-blown open-ended dynamic setting. The underlying preferences of both Courts and contracting parties are fully forward looking and unbiased. Our point of departure is instead the...