Much of economics is built on the assumption of individuals being driven by nothing but

The role of a person's identity and sense of integration into society as instruments

The standard route for aggregating infinite utility streams using a real-valued representation runs into well-known difficulties as soon as we insist on the axiom of inter-generational equity. The aim of this paper is to explore what is feasible without abandoning this axiom. The paper focusses...

This paper demonstrates how our sense of identity can emerge out of mere markers of social distinction that may have no innate significance, but, nevertheless, spread to various aspects of our lives and be the root of conflict. The basis of such conflicts could arise from the use of race to form...

This paper models a developing nation that faces a foreign exchange shortage and hence its demand for foreign goods is limited both by its income and its foreign exchange balance. Availability of international credit relaxes the second constraint. It is shown that in this setting the...

In this paper, we examine the restrictions that any concept of extended anonymity must satisfy in order to be compatible with the existence of a Paretian social welfare relation (SWR). We completely characterize the class of permissible permutations associated with any Paretian SWR; that is,...

The problem of child labor has gone beyond being viewed as a matter of regional and intra-national concern to one of international debate and possible global 'persuasion' and policy intervention. It is argued in this paper that, in crafting policy for mitigating this enormous problem of our...

Measures of unemployment and poverty have tended to focus solely on those currently unemployed or below the poverty line. This approach has ignored the members of society that are vulnerable to becoming unemployed or falling into poverty. Current literature in this area has implicitly assumed...

The paper fully characterizes the Bertrand equilibria of oligopolistic markets where consumers may ignore the last (i.e. the right-most) digits of prices. Consumers, in this model, do not do this reflexively or out of irrationality, but only when they expect the time cost of acquiring full...