Much of game theory is founded on the assumption that individual players are endowed with preferences that can be represented by a real-valued utility function. However, in reality human preferences are often not transitive. This is especially true for the indifference relation, which can lead...

The"tapering talk"starting on May 22, 2013, when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke first spoke of the possibility of the U.S. central bank reducing its security purchases, had a sharp negative impact on emerging markets. India was among those hardest hit. The rupee depreciated by 18 percent...

At least 120 million of the world's children aged 5 to 14 worked full-time in 1995, most of them under hazardous, unhygienic conditions, for more than 10 hours a day. This is an old problem worldwide but particularly so in Third World countries in recent decades. What has changed, with...

The supply behavior of labor often depends on the demand conditions prevailing in the labor market. If demand is inadequate, households may send additional household members, who otherwise would not have worked, to look for work, for fear the main income earner may lose his job. The authors...

The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce bribery by incentivizing whistle-blowing. This paper investigates the role played by asymmetric punishment in a setting where bribe size is determined by Nash...

The paper develops a simple model to demonstrate that, paradoxically, greater competition may exacerbate the problem of corruption. Market participants engaging in corrupt practices enjoy lower production costs -- maybe because they pay a bribe to avoid installing the environmental safeguards...

This paper investigates the role of fiscal guarantees in promoting infrastructure investment. Infrastructure is a critical driver of economic growth, but infrastructure entails significant up-front costs that yield benefits after a time lag. Investors hesitate to put their money down on private...

As the Eurozone crisis drags on, it is evident that a part of the problem lies in the architecture of debt and its liabilities within the Eurozone and, more generally, the European Union. This paper argues that a large part of the problem can be mitigated by permitting appropriately-structured...

This paper analyzes the evolution of sovereign credit ratings in the wake of the global financial crisis by studying changes in actual, shadow, and relative ratings between 2008 and 2012. For countries that do not have a rating from the major rating agencies, shadow ratings are estimated as a...

The method of randomization has been a major driver in the recent rise to prominence of empirical development economics. It has helped uncover patterns and facts that had earlier escaped attention. But it has also given rise to debate and controversy. This paper evaluates the method of...