Fixed point theorems are the standard tool used to prove the existence of equilibria in mathematical economics. This paper shows how to prove a slight generalization of Brouwer's and Kakutani's fixed point theorems using the familiar techniques of drawing and shifting curves in the plane and is,...

This paper analyzes how political institutions, wealth distribution and economic activities affect each other during the process of development. A simple general equilibrium model of rent-seeking political elites with two productive sectors (modern and traditional) is presented.

We consider an economy where property rights are necessary to ensure sufficient rewards to ex ante investments. Because enforcement of property rights influences the ex post distribution of rents there is room for corruption. We characterize the optimal organization of society and the optimal...

We highlight an example of considerable bias in officially published input-output data (factor-income shares) by an LDC (Turkey), which many researchers use without question. We make use of an intertemporal general equilibrium model of trade and production to evaluate the dynamic gains for...

Dual economy, large unemployment, a fixed number of skilled workers, perfect capital mobility, migrant labor force working in South African gold mines, and a cycle of poverty characterize Lesotho. This paper develops a general equilibrium model for Lesotho specifying these absorbing economic...

Most occupational choice models introduce only two options for agents: entrepreneurial activities or wage-employment. However, these models represent inadequately the labor force distribution from developing countries, where an important proportion of the total work force are self-employed...

Deme et al. (2005, DFN) present a general equilibrium model for the case of Lesotho with a rising step skill acquisition function. DFN show that only a large amount of government expenditure on education, training and skill acquisition can pull the economy out of its inertia. As a comment on...

This paper studies the effects of financial intermediation on aggregate levels and the distribution of resources in an economy with wealth-constrained heterogeneous agents and occupational choice. Whether an agent becomes an entrepreneur depends on a realized entrepreneurial ability and...

Most occupational choice models introduce only two options for agents: entrepreneurial activities or wage-employment. However, these models represent inadequately the labor force distribution from developing countries, where an important proportion of the total work force are self-employed...