Consider a population of farmers who live around a lake. Each farmer engages in trade with his two adjacent neighbors. The trade is governed by a prisoner's dilemma "rule of engagement". A farmer's payoff is the sum of the payoffs from the two prisoner's dilemma games played with his two...

Consider a population of farmers who live around a lake. Each farmer engages in trade with his m adjacent neighbors, where m is termed the "span of interaction". Trade is governed by a prisoner's dilemma "rule of engagement". A farmer's payoff is the sum of the payoffs from the m prisoner's...

In this paper I study policy responses to an increase in post-merger distress. I consider the integration of regions and nations as a merger of populations which I view as a revision of social space, and I identify the effect of the merger on aggregate distress. The paper is based on the premise...

I study the integration of regions in the form of a merger of populations, which I interpret as a revision of people's social space and their comparison set; I illustrate the way in which a merger can aggravate social distress; and I consider policy responses. Specifically, I view the merger of...

This paper develops a model of voluntary migration into degrading work. The essence of the model is a tension between two "bads" that which arises from being relatively deprived at home, and that which arises from engaging in humiliating work away from home. Balancing between these two "bads"...

This paper develops a one sector, two-input model with endogenous human capital formation. The two inputs are two types of skilled labor: "engineering," which exerts a positive externality on total factor productivity, and "law," which does not. The paper shows that a marginal prospect of...

This paper identifies the migration policies that emerge when both the sending country and the receiving country wield power to set migration quotas, when controlling migration is costly, and when the decision how much human capital to acquire depends, among other things, on the migration...

A utilitarian social planner who maximizes social welfare assigns the available income to those who are most efficient in converting income into utility. However, when individuals are concerned about their income falling behind the incomes of others, the optimal income distribution under...