Of the world’s 6.7 billion people (as of 2008), 1.3 billion lived on less than $1.25 Purchasing Power Parity dollars per person per day and another 1.7 billion lived on between $1.25 and $2.50 PPP dollars (Chen and Ravallion, 2012). The scourge of absolute economic misery among billions of the...

We study work effort with its various determinants such as the educational level of the worker, the minimum or start-up salary as well as the initial endowment of the worker. By means of optimization we find that optimal work effort depends directly on the initial income available to the worker,...