This paper investigates how access to credit might impinge on risk behavior. It demonstrates that credit, by facilitating the pooling of risk across time, renders a risk-averse individual more capable of absorbing risk. Some implications of this result--mainly for developing economies--are then...

This paper considers, in an overlapping generations model, the fertility choice of parents confronted with the possibility of child mortality. The motive for having children is assumed to be old age security and, therefore, not altruistic. It is shown first, in a partial equilibrium setting,...

In this paper cartel behavior in business cycles when some firms are vulnerable to bankruptcy in the downturns is investigated. This vulnerability would restrict the set of collusive equilibria that are feasible in a repeated game and possibly result in a breakdown, in recessions, of all...

This paper hypothesizes that, when their products are imperfect substitutes, firms can promote collusion by cross-licensing their competing patents. Cross-licensing is shown to enhance the degree of collusion achieved in a repeated game by credibly introducing the threat of increased rivalry in...

We offer a theory of gender differences in parental altruism based on the asymmetry that female fertility is constrained but male fertility is relatively unconstrained. Modelling human preferences as having been shaped during the Pleistocene, we derive evolutionarily stable, co-evolved male and...

We provide a model of know-how sharing between competing firms in which each of two firms gets a stochastic innovation in its stock of know-how in every period. Separately considering the cases when innovations are indivisible and divisible, we examine the nature of the subgame perfect sharing...

We examine how preferences evolve by natural selection in a competitive environment similar to that characterizing much of our evolutionary past. We find that the evolutionarily stable preferences in this context exhibit a concern not only for absolute payoffs but also for relative payoffs, and...

The analysis attempts to bring out how the links between the various sectors of the economy impinge on the development process. It is shown that moving labour from agriculture into industry is a key element in improving the well-being of the poor. The analysis brings out why growth in...