We augment the standard asymmetric learning model with costly effort. With this adjustment, wages become fully informative of employee productivity, rather than merely reflective of public signals. Further, strategies designed to mask employee quality, commonly seen in standard models, become...

Udry (1996) uses household survey data and finds that the allocation of resources within households is Pareto inefficient, contradicting the main assumption of most collective models of intrahousehold bargaining. He finds that among plots planted with the same crop in the same year, within a...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether return migrants are more likely to become entrepreneurs than non-migrants. We develop a theoretical search model that puts forward the trade off faced by returnees since overseas migration provides an opportunity for human and physical capital...

Poor families around the world spend a large fraction of their income consuming goods that do not appear to alleviate poverty, while saving at low rates. We suggest that individuals care about economic status and hence we interpret this behavior as conspicuous consumption that is intended to...

Widespread liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s enabled the freer movement of capital across international borders. Alongside large and often volatile movements in capital flows, risks to macro stability and the health of the financial system have led many countries to reconsider the wisdom of...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether return migrants are more likely to become entrepreneurs than non-migrants. We develop a theoretical search model that puts forward the trade off faced by returnees since overseas migration provides an opportunity for human and physical capital...

This research examines theoretically and empirically the economic origins of ethnolinguistic diversity. The empirical analysis constructs detailed data on the distribution of land quality and elevation across contiguous regions, virtual and real countries, and shows that variation in elevation...

Udry (1996) uses household survey data and finds that the allocation of resources within households is Pareto inefficient, contradicting the main assumption of most collective models of intrahousehold bargaining. He finds that among plots planted with the same crop in the same year, within a...

In many models of corruption where enforcement is unbiased and the official maximizes her income, the rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children's education, implying that corruption reduces educational inequality. We develop models of bribery that reflect the fact that, in developing...

Despite its significance in migration decisions, scholars rarely explore the migration distance effect deeper than the first level of interpretation derived from the simple neoclassical theory of migration. This study revisits the migration distance effect in the spirit of Knightian distinction...