The aim of this paper is to understand the interactions between productive effort and the creation of synergies that are the sources of technological collaboration agreements, agglomeration, social stratification, etc. We model this interaction in a way that allows us to characterize how agents...

Conventional segregation indices indicate complete integration when the proportion of minorities in a metropolitan area is replicated in any subarea. However, this would not occur, even absent discrimination, because majorities and minorities have different distributions of other...

This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well-being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small...

We analyze a mutual fire insurance mechanism used in Andorra, which is called La Crema in the local language. This mechanism relies on households' announced property values to determine how much a household is reimbursed in the case of a fire and how payments are apportioned among other...

Research in sociology and economics point to important role for social networks in labor markets. Social contacts mediate propagation of rich and reliable information among indi- viduals and thus help workers find jobs and employers find employees. Recent theoretical advances show that for...