2025 Zayira Ray
Julius Silver Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science,
Professor of Economics, New York University
Research Associate, NBER
Part-Time Professor, University of Warwick
Research Fellow, CESifo
Spool Member, ThReD

Department of Economics, 
New York University,
19 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.
debraj.ray@nyu.edu, +1 (212)-998-8906.

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Oxford University Press, 2008. This book is now open-access; feel free to download a copy, and to buy the print version if you like the book.
≋ Three Randomly Selected Papers
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Cooperation in Community Interaction without Information Flows

(with Parikshit Ghosh), Review of Economic Studies 63, 491–519, 1996.

Summary. We study cooperative behavior in communities where the flow of information regarding past conduct is limited or missing. Players are initially randomly matched with no knowledge of each other’s past actions; they endogenously decide whether or not to continue
the repeated relationship. We define social equilibrium in such communities. Such equilibria
are characterized by an initial testing phase, followed by cooperation if the test is successful. It is precisely the presence of myopic types that permit cooperation, by raising barriers to entry into new relationships.

Wages and Involuntary Unemployment in the Slack Season of a Village Economy

(with Anindita Mukherjee), Journal of Development Economics 37, 227-264, 1992.

Summary. We model slack season wages in a village economy, in the presence of involuntary unemployment. Our model draws its inspiration from sociological notions of ‘everyday peasant resistance’.  A continuum of equilibrium wage configurations is obtained. These configurations, barring one, involve wages exceeding reservation wages, despite the presence of involuntary unemployment.

The Farsighted Stable Set

(with Rajiv Vohra), Econometrica  83, 977–1011, 2015. Online Appendix.

Summary. We propose a definition of farsighted stability in coalitional games, in the spirit of von Neumann-Morgenstern stability and its modification by Harsanyi. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a farsighted stable set containing just a single-payoff allocation. We then conduct a comprehensive analysis of the existence and structure of farsighted stable sets in simple games.