We employ a stochastic dynamic programming approach to study decision making by an individual wishing to have an arranged marriage. First, we show that this individual never opts out of a voluntarily agreed upon marriage. Second, we demonstrate that our marrying individual uses a reservation...

We employ a stochastic dynamic programming approach to study decision making by an individual wishing to have an arranged marriage. First, we show that this individual never opts out of a voluntarily agreed upon marriage. Second, we demonstrate that our marrying individual uses a reservation...

We discuss an approach to modeling the slack season provision of guided tours to tourists that accounts for the twin phenomena of stochastic demand and tourist heterogeneity but is different from the way in which this problem has been modeled in the extant tourism literature. Our discussion uses...

In this note, we study a guided tour providing firm that operates in a stochastic environment. The environment is stochastic because this firm's costs are deterministic but its revenues are stochastic. Since revenues are stochastic, the profits of this firm are also stochastic. For such a firm,...

In this note, we analyze a simple auction mechanism for locating noxious facilities such as hazardous waste dumps, prisons, and trash disposal plants. Specifically, we first delineate the details of our auction mechanism. Next, we solve for the symmetric equilibrium of this auction. Finally, we...

We analyze a market for microfinance in a region of a developing nation in which all projects are either of high or low quality. There is adverse selection because only borrowers know whether their project is of high or low quality but the microfinance institutions (MFIs) do not. The MFIs are...

We analyze the economic growth related effects of learning by doing in a region that is creative in the sense of Richard Florida. Firms in this region use physical and creative capital to produce output. We model learning by doing and our analysis of the working of this creative region leads to...

In this note we analyze a game of marital infidelity. The husband can either be faithful to or cheat on his wife. The wife can either monitor or not monitor her husband. We first determine the best response correspondences of the two players. Second, we explain why there is no pure-strategy Nash...

We first construct a theoretical model of tax evasion in a stylized developing country in which all taxpayers have either high or low income. The key problem is that the high income taxpayers may under report their income. An individual income tax return can only be verified with an audit that...

We analyze the activities of an entrepreneur who must, at each date, decide whether to search for a new production technique or to produce output with an extant technique. Our analysis leads to four results. First, we show that if our entrepreneur rejects a particular production technique at a...