A simple auction-theoretic framework is used to examine symmetric litigation environments where the legal ownership of a disputed asset is unknown by the court. The court observes only the quality of the case presented by each party, and awards the asset to the party presenting the best case. Rational litigants influence the quality of their cases by hiring skillful attorneys. This framework pe...

We explore the role of the ownership structure of capital in an economy that suffers from barriers to entry and an imperfect financial system. In such an environment, an unequal distribution of capital provides an explanation for trade flows and trade gains even when countries do not differ in relative factor endowments or available technologies. Moreover, an uneven asset distribution is associ...

Modern development economics emerged with the realization that poverty changes the set of options available to individuals. Poverty thus affects behavior, even if the decision maker is “neo-classical”: unboundedly rational, forward-looking, and internally consistent. The “homo economicus” at the core of neo-classical economics (“calculating, unemotional maximizer”, (Mullainathan and Thaler, 200...

The tea plantation sector has been considered to be a major source of livelihood and employment for the population of the regional economies. Structural changes in this sector have led to the emergence of labour categories such as permanent estate workers, casual estate workers and self employed small tea growers. Several studies have attempted to understand the human development status of the ...

This paper proposes a new channel to explain the positive price-volume correlation in the housing market. I study a simple overlapping generations model in the presence of heterogeneous agents. In the model, (i) consumer investors are forward looking and heterogeneous both in their holding periods and in their ownership preference, (ii) the underlying time varying macro fundamental is persisten...