: The paper provides a model where authority relationships are founded on reputation. The viability of authority is the result of subordinates' free-riding on each other challenges, reducing the frequency of challenges, and making reputations worth defending. The party with authority secures...

The role of agricultural productivity in economic development is addressed in a two-sector model of endogenous growth in which a) preferences are non-homothetic and income elasticity of demand for the agricultural good is less than unitary, and b) the engine of growth is learning-by-doing in the...

This paper considers basic constitutional questions about how to elect a legislature. Electoral systems that require blocks of voters to coordinate their votes create a need for pre-election leadership and raise barriers to entry against new parties. Such barriers to entry can rigidity the...

Although psychologists view bonuses and penalties as very different means of providing incentives for workers, economists have had less success at making sense of the distinction. A rational worker should be indifferent as to whether a payment scheme is called a bonus or a penalty plan if the...

I study an overlapping generations model where physical and human capitals are used in production and can be accumulated by withholding resources from current consumption. Human capital is accumulated through a schooling system which can be finance either by private expenditures or by taxes on...

This paper builds models of nonlinear dynamics in the aggregate investment and borrower net worth and uses them to study the causes and nature of endogenous credit cycles. The basic model has two types of projects: the Good and the Bad. The Bad is highly productive, but, unlike the Good, it...