Random matching models with a continuum population are widely used in economics to study environments where agents interact in small coalitions. This paper provides foundations to such models. In particular, the paper establishes an existence result for random matchings that are universal in the...

Many economic models include random shocks imposed on a large number (continuum) of economic agents with individual risk. In this context, an exact law of large numbers and its converse is presented in Sun (2006) to characterize the cancelation of individual risk via aggregation. However, it is...

We study a boundedly rational model of imitation when payoff distributions of actions differ across types of individuals. Individuals observe others’ actions and payoffs, and a comparison signal. One of two inefficiencies always arises: (i) uniform adoption, i.e., all individuals choose the...

The use of the analytical tools of classic and neo-classic economics has played a significant role in the study of Africa’s economic history since the 1970s. In this paper, we summon this body of work under the paradigm of Smithian growth models. Although different in techniques and...

With new data and a new methodology, this paper reassesses the forces that led to the rise of Chinese sericulture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study challenges the prevailing view that Chinese peasants switched to sericulture in order to gain a higher aggregate...

We show how the formal theory of differential equations provides a unifying framework for some aspects of constrained Hamiltonian systems and of the numerical analysis of differential algebraic equations, respectively. This concerns especially the Dirac algorithm for the construction of all...