"Community governance" is the set of small group social interactions that, with market and state, determine economic outcomes. We argue (i) community governance addresses some common market and state failures but typically relies on insider--outsider distinctions that may be morally repugnant...

The Walrasian general equilibrium model is the centrepiece of modern economic theory, but progress in understanding its dynamical properties has been meagre. This article shows that the instability of Walras' tâtonnement process is due to the public nature of prices, which leads to excessive...

Many developing countries are experimenting with decentralisation of public service delivery to elected local governments instead of bureaucrats appointed by a central government. We study the resulting implications in a theoretical model in which the central government is uninformed about local...

In this paper we point to special problems faced by economists in 'peripheral' fields (like development economics), particularly those at early stages of their career, in publishing their research results in mainline journals, and how this creates a kind of vicious circle that may be damaging to...

To analyse the effect of asset inequality on co--operation within a group, we consider a two--player nonco--operative model of conservation of a common--pool resource. Overexploitation by one user affects another"s payoff by reducing the next--period catch. We give necessary and sufficient...

We investigate the manner in which a desire to emulate the rich influences individuals' allocation of time between labour and leisure, greater inequality inducing longer work hours as a result. Data on work hours in ten countries over the period 1963-98 show that greater inequality is indeed...