This paper develops a monopolistic competition model to study the characteristics of products, such as quality improvement and product diversity (function-specialization and individualization), and the division of labor in production. Different from the ordinary economic model, our utility...

A perfect-competition model is developed to analyze duality in specialization and technology such as in the men¡¯s clothing industry, an industry with highly seasonal nature of the business cycle. We show that when the market fluctuation is large enough, some firms will specialize in one...

According to the principle of comparative advantage, the gender division of labor is utility enhancing during marriage. However, in the long term it decreases the earning power of the party who specializes in housework. Once the marriage is dissolved she/he will be the losing party and hence...