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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On the Dynamics of Inequality

Economic Theory 29, 291–306, 2006.

Summary. The dynamics of inequality are studied in a model of human capital accumulation with credit constraints. This model admits a multiplicity of steady state skill ratios that exhibit varying degrees of inequality across households. The main result studies nonstationary equilibrium paths, and shows that an equilibrium sequence of skill ratios must converge monotonically to the smallest steady state that exceeds the initial ratio for that sequence. This paper, in honor of Mukul Majumdar, publishes notes from 1990, which contain a different proof of the main result.

Inefficiency and the Golden Rule: Phelps-Koopmans Revisited

(with Tapan Mitra), in Sugata Marjit and Meenakshi Rajeev (eds), Emerging Issues in Economic Development: A Contemporary Theoretical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Dipankar Dasgupta & Amitava Bose, Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary. We study the celebrated Phelps-Koopmans theorem in environments with nonconvex production technologies. We argue that a robust failure of the theorem occurs in such environments. Specifically, we prove that the Phelps-Koopmans theorem must fail whenever the net output of the aggregate production function f(x), given by f(x) − x, is increasing in any region between the golden rule and the maximum sustainable capital stock.

 

Farsighted Network Formation

(with Bhaskar Dutta and Sayantan Ghosal), Journal of Economic Theory 122, 143 – 164, 2005.

Summary. This paper studies a model of dynamic network formation when individuals are farsighted: players evaluate the desirability of a “current” move in terms of its consequences on the entire discounted stream of payoffs. We define a concept of equilibrium which takes into account farsighted behavior of agents and allows for limited cooperation amongst agents.